Brian H. Prince

Moving my blog

2010-02-09T10:25:00.000-05:00

I have moved my blog to my own server. I have tried to redirect every way in to the new site, so if you are seeing this you are coming to the old address "brianhprince.blogspot.com".

You should change to www.brianhprince.com.

-bhp

My top 10 list for 2010

2010-02-08T12:15:00.001-05:00

Near the end of any year every magazine, newspaper, and website come outs with their own top ten list for something. Some even one-up each other by having top 100 lists. For example, the top 10 movies of the year, or the top 100 games of all time.

I admit that I might be a little late on releasing my own top ten list for the year. This post has been bouncing around my head for a while, but two things have happened that caused me to get off my duff and write it.

The first is that I have bought a few albums from MC Frontalot lately, and have been really enjoying them. He has a song titled ‘I hate your blog.’ You can listen to it for free here. I really hate those stupid Top N articles magazines, blogs, etc put out at the end of the year. This song inspired me to think up the idea of having my own top ten list.

The second motivator is that I was hanging around with Leon and told him of my idea. He thought it was funny, and encouraged me to finally post it.

My top ten list is here…

Top Ten Numbers

1. Zero – Zero is important to us. It is paired with 1 to make binary, and without binary you would be reading this on hand made paper tacked to the front door of the local church.

2. One – The first natural number. This number existed before zero. Also, 1 is the loneliest number.

3. Infinity – Not all infinities are the same size. There are whole branches of math that wouldn’t exist without the concept of infinity.

4. Two – Without two we couldn’t have powers of two, which is important for binary to work. I also seem to always see numbers that are the power of two all around me. It is kind of like that move 23 with Jim Carey. Another number I see a lot is 12:34. I see this on clocks all the time. I like it because the numbers are in sequence, and that makes it a calm number for me, instead of all of the chaotic random numbers the rest of the times during the are made of.

5. 3.1415…. – Pi. The ratio of any circle's circumference to its diameter. Again, a lot of math wouldn’t work without this invention.

6. 42 – ‘nuff said.

7. 1701 – As in NCC-1701. As in James T. Kirk, Spock, and Kahn.

8. 360 – Both degrees of a circle, and the name of my favorite gaming machine. Yay!

9. 1.6180339887498948482 – The golden ratio. This is seen all through nature, and leads to beautiful, graceful designs.

10. 9.86 – If you tack on m/sec^2 you get the local acceleration due to gravity on Earth. This one time in college we were finding g through experimentation, and no matter what we did the local value for g in this one corner of the lab was always lower than everywhere else. We would reproduce the experiment in another part of the lab and we would get the right result. Go back to the ‘weird’ corner and get the result again. I am sure that will become a plot point in a Dan Brown novel. Gravity. Its not just a good idea, its the law.

Software Engineering 101, Southern Style

2010-02-08T12:12:00.001-05:00

Microsoft often holds events on how to use our latest tools and technologies. I love going to those events, and helping people get the most out of our tools and frameworks.

One thing that I am passionate about is how we can all be better developers. Jim Holmes put on an event in Columbus a few months ago called Software Engineering 101 that covers how to be a better developer. The morning is comprised of presentations on SOLID, etc. The afternoon is just one big pair programming session to work and learn hands on how to use the principles discussed in the morning. The afternoon will provide guidance and challenges to give you something to work towards.

The Columbus event was sold out and packed very quickly. It was such a huge success I begged Jim to bring is to Nashville. We will be holding the event in the Nashville office. The event will also be webcasted so people will be able to participate online. We will even be able to help people who are pairing at home.

While we will be using mostly .NET and Visual Studio, these practices work for any language or platform. Please spread the word. And bring your computer!

Event details:

Saturday, February 27, 2010
8:00am - 5:00pm
Microsoft Office
2555 Meridian Blvd., Ste. 300
Franklin, TN 37067

Seating for the live event is limited, so register today. If you can't join us for the in-person event, register for the online experience.

8:00 am – Introductions

8:15 am - Principles of Object Oriented Programming

9:30 am - SOLID Software Development

11:00 am - Understanding Code Metrics

11:20 am – Hands On Demo

12:30 pm - Lunch (not provided)

1:30 pm - Hands on Test Driven Development 5:00 pm – Closing

Software Engineering 101

This is a one-day, FREE event focused on core skills that modern developers need to have to be successful today. This isn’t about learning the basics of Silverlight, WPF, or <insert_new_tech_of_day>, rather, this conference will help you understand how to build software that is better designed, more maintainable, and more testable.

We’ll spend the morning on fundamentals around object-oriented programming, the SOLID principles and a few other important skills. .NET is completely object-oriented, but many developers don’t fully grasp the underlying principles to get the most of it. We will then build on this with a tour of the SOLID principles. SOLID is an acronym for the five principles that developers should follow regardless of project type or platform. This session will rely on the object-oriented knowledge, and will teach the developers how to better write their code. The next section will focus on metrics in code (and will use our tools for the samples) to show that you need to understand and instrument your codebase as you extend it. The last session will build on all of this to show modern test driven development (showing MStest and other frameworks). Using all of these skills, and our tools/platform, developers will build better software with a higher level of quality, and better customer satisfaction.

The afternoon will focus on hands-on practice with the skills, since it isn’t enough to just watch someone talk about them. A programmers problem (think like an assignment in a CS class in college) will be given. Developers will need to bring their own laptops with Visual Studio, to work through the afternoon. People will pair up on their laptops to write the tests and code they need to solve the problems. Those that are attending the session from home will participate in the same way, writing the code on their laptop to solve the problems.

We will have ‘presenters’ in the live meeting that can answer Q&A, and even check on their code by using the live meeting. We will pick one speaker and one person that is new to these skills to pair together, and color comment on what they are doing over live meeting. So people attending from home can do the work on their own VS, and watch a new person learn and do at the side of the speaker over live meeting.

on devexpress tv while at the PDC

2010-02-08T12:11:00.001-05:00

While I was at PDC this fall I sat down with Mehul Harry from DevExpress to talk about Azure, Cloud Computing, and of course soft skillz. The interview is only a few minutes long, I hope you like it.

Thanks to Mehul for having me on the show.

http://tv.devexpress.com/PDC09BrianPrince.movie

on devexpress tv while at the PDC

2010-02-08T10:59:00.001-05:00

While I was at PDC this fall I sat down with Mehul Harry from DevExpress to talk about Azure, Cloud Computing, and of course soft skillz. The interview is only a few minutes long, I hope you like it.

Thanks to Mehul for having me on the show.

http://tv.devexpress.com/PDC09BrianPrince.movie

So what happened at PDC?

2009-12-17T16:08:00.001-05:00

What happened at PDC do you ask? Lots of stuff. We are shipping more bits now than we ever have. First, watch this slide deck we have put together that is a quick lap around the PDC and find out what makes you smile.

And then you can go to www.microsoftpdc.com/videos to watch all of the sessions, and drill deep into each topic. This will give you something to do on your Zune while travelling over the river and through the hills to grandmothers house this holiday.

I want to thank the Findlay .NET UG and the Knoxville .NET UG for hosting me, and for everyone coming out to the meetings.

I also want to thank Kevin Grossnicklaus. He was the first to put a deck together,and he shared it with us to save work. Mike Wood also helped by making sure we hit all the top points, and polished up my shoddy hack job on Kevin’s deck.

DogFood II is in the bag!

2009-11-14T15:10:00.001-05:00

Wow! A year has come and gone and the second annual DogFood conference is done. We had 19 partners come together to put on a two day event for customers in Columbus, Ohio. We had attendees from four hours away! There were over 45 sessions. I was able to deliver a talk on using Azure.

There were 400 attendees over the two days, and I think everyone had a lot of fun, and learned a lot.

I want to thank everyone who came to my session, and please connect with me if you have more questions about Azure.

The slides are here:

Dog Food Conference v2 registration is open

2009-10-29T12:22:00.001-04:00

This is the second year for the dog food conference, brain child of Danilo Casino. It is a local event, put on by MS and our partners. This year we have two full days, with four tracks. We have both local MS employees, as well as some blue badges coming in from out of state. Many of the presenters are local rock stars that work for our partners. This event is free (unless you are in pubsec, then you have to pay for your food).

It was a great event last year, and I hope to see you there.

Since the event is two days, we have two registration links. Please bear with us, it’s just how the machine works.

The reg links:

Thursday Registration Link

Friday Registration Link

· **Attendees must register for each day separately**

What:

· Please join us for the 2^nd Annual Dog Food Conference. We will have MS speakers, MS partners, ISVs, MS MVPs and community leads presenting 40 topics. The story behind “Eating one’s own Dog Food”

When:

· November 12-13, 2009; Attendees must sign up for both days separately

Where:

· 8800 Lyra Dr. Columbus, OH 43240. Sessions will be on Floor 3, 4 and 5

Why:

· See the overviews and roadmaps for MS applications, knowledge transfer with your peers and meet with MS Partners and User Group leads.

Thursday, November 12, 2009: Topic List View

Collaboration:

· BPOS

· SharePoint Road Map

· SharePoint Governance

· KnowledgeLake: Document Imaging and Capture for SharePoint

· Exchange 2010 Overview

· Dynamics XRM

Core Infrastructure Optimization:

· MS Support Lifecycle

· Windows Mobile

· Windows 7

Development, Application Lifecycle Management:

· TFS: Process template

· Test Driven Development

· LINQ

· F#

Data Platform:

· SQL 2008 R2 Overview

Project Management & Business Intelligence:

· Performance Point Services

· Project Server Overview

· Project Portfolio Server

· Sketch Flow

Friday: November 13, 2009: Topic List View

Collaboration:

· Office Communication Server

Infrastructure Optimization:

· SCCM R3: Desktop Power Management

· Server 2008 R2, Hyper V

· Application and Desktop Virtualization

· SMSE Suite: DPM, SCOM, SCCM & VMM

· Windows 7 Lunch & Learn

· MS Support Lifecycle

Application Platform, Cloud Services:

· SilverLight Overview

· F# Overview

· BizTalk 2009 & SOA

· COBOL & mainframe apps on the Windows Platform

· Silverlight, Rich Internet Applications

· Bing Maps

· Windows Azure

Security:

· RSA Data Loss Prevention Suite

· Writing Secure Code

· Forefront Identity Manager

· Forefront Unified Access Gateway

· Forefront Threat Management Gateway

· Forefront Client Security

Application Lifecycle Management

· TFS 2010

· Implementing Scrum with TFS

*Thanks to all the sponsors; Dog Food II would not happen without your support*
Cardinal Solutions	Sophic Group	ICC	Quick Solutions	ProSymmetry
KnowledgeLake	HMB	Kizan	Avanade	Dell
Mimosa Systems	Strategic Data Systems, INC.	Sogeti	AgileTech	T3 Technologies
ProSource	SIS	Neudesic	RSA	DeVry University

nPlus1.org will hold ArcSummit in Chicago

2009-10-28T15:28:00.001-04:00

https://www.clicktoattend.com/invitation.aspx?code=142763
Details on the event is below:
When: December 7, 2009
Location
Microsoft MTC - Aon Center
200 E. Randolph
Suite 200
Chicago, IL 60601
United States

Recommended Audiences: Solution Architects, Software Developers, Developers, Architects
nPlus1.org is hosting its fifth Architecture Summit on December 7th at the Microsoft MTC in Chicago, IL. The topic of this summit will be Patterns and Principles.

Morning Session (Optional): An Introduction to Object Oriented Programming
10:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Are you new to OOP? Do you want a refresher on the benefits of Interfaces and the differences between implements and extends? The morning session is a two hour introductory course of Object Oriented Programming. If you are new to OOP the lessons in this session will prepare you for the more advanced topics in the afternoon.
If you are already well versed in OOP then feel free to come have a refresher, or simply join us for lunch and the advanced sessions in the afternoon. The morning session is completely optional.

Afternoon sessions:
Session One: Software Patterns
Patterns are an important tool to use as architects and developers. They provide a common vocabulary for us to design with, as well as a common approach to a common problem. Come learn about useful patterns, and how to use them in your everyday code.

Session Two: How I Learned To Love Dependency Injection
Dependency Injection is one of those scary topics that most developers avoid. It sounds all ‘high-falootin’ and complex. It’s not. Really. We wouldn’t lie. It’s a great way to manage complexity in your system, and a great way to make your system so much more testable. And isn’t that what we all want?
Each session will be followed by open discussions periods.
A catered lunch will be provided starting at noon. This will divide the morning introductory sessions from the advanced sessions. Register once for all session and choose to attend the morning, the afternoon or both! Lunch is provided for attendees for any of the sessions.

About nPlus1.org (http://www.nplus1.org)

nPlus1.org is a site dedicated to helping Architects, aspiring Architects and Lead Developers learn, connect and contribute. At nplu1.org you have access to great first party content written by some of the most skilled and experienced Architects working today. You also have access to a nexus of content from around the Internet aimed at keeping Architects up to date on all the new developments in their fields of interest.

PSR will rescue your Thanksgiving!

2009-10-28T10:00:00.001-04:00

PSR stands for Problem Step Recorder, and is a tool that ships in Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2. It was designed to help support professionals have users record the steps of their problem so they can see what is going on. It fixes the ‘See the big blue ball in the lower left-hand corner?’ problem. While we have remote connection capabilities, and screen recorders, those can be hard to setup for a typical user, and takes too long to show something simple. PSR is really lightweight and helps with the initial triaging of the problem.

And let’s face it, if you are reading this you are probably the IT Support team for your family. You are probably feeling a lot of angst about the upcoming holidays, especially Thanksgiving, which is the one holiday you are forced to hang around with people you actively avoid on Twitter and Facebook. You are not alone, we all feel like this. In the 50’s it was everyone asking the family member who was a physician about medical questions all day. Now it’s us.

What is RAM? How do I replace the smoke that came out of my computer? Which side is up on this new blank paper?

Do not let another Thanksgiving go to waste by being cornered by all the needy humans in your family that need help with their computers, or home networks, or home made scale models of the death star in their backyard. Keep in mind that help with Xbox achievements are perfectly acceptable, and provide a way to dodge all of the other requests..

To start PSR, click on the start menu, and type PSR in the search box. Done. When you start it you will see a little bar popup. Just tell the user to click the record button, and reproduce the problem.

Once the problem has been reproduced, they should click the stop button. This will ask them where to save the file (perhaps the desktop in this case so it is easily found again.) PSR creates a static HTML file with everything embedded, all in one file. No mess of directories with pictures and text scattered everywhere, since that would be brittle. Have the user email or IM you the file.

From there you will see a step by step document on what the user was doing, with built in highlights to see what they were clicking or typing.

While this was developed with the intention of helping IT Support get a better picture of how a user was breaking something, think of all the other uses. You could use it to easily generate documentation for your application, or document how policies should be implemented.

I just used it the other day to explain how to mark an assembly as ‘copy local’. It was a lot easier to send this small html file that it was to describe it in words in an email. The friend I was helping ‘got it’ immediately, and helped them get on with what they were doing.

You should try out PSR yourself and see how it works. I really love small, light, and easy to use solutions to problems that we all have. PSR gets my “Utility that is automatically included in Windows” award of the year. The runner up is the Snipping Tool, which was shipped in Vista.

Note: I love my family, and everyone in it, and I love helping them with technology, and talking about it. This whole post is all in jest. Enjoy your turkey day.

Windows 7 at HDC

2009-10-22T16:21:00.006-04:00

I was at the HDC this past week in Omaha, NE. I had a blast! It was a great conference, and I got to speak with a lot of the local developers. People were really excited about the pending launch of Windoes 7 and the keynote from Scott Guthrie on the new VS2010 build. I interviewed a bunch of people on what their favorite Windoes 7 feature is. There is one surprising guest half way through.

Thanks to David Giard who was the wizard who edited the video. You should check out his blog, and his webcast. It's a great show.

IronRuby & IronPython CTPs for VS2010 beta 2

2009-10-22T14:30:00.001-04:00

I have a lot of friends who really like to work in Python and Ruby, so I thought I would pass this announcement on. If you are into Python and Ruby, you might want to check out www.codemash.org, a great event I help with coming up in January.

Today we announced the release of the IronRuby and IronPython CTPs for .NET 4.0 Beta 2. This is the third preview of IronRuby and IronPython running under the Dynamic Language Runtime that is built directly into .NET 4.0. As before, this release allows you to use IronRuby objects and types as .NET 4.0 dynamic objects from within C# and Visual Basic code. These binaries are roughly equivalent to the functionality found in IronRuby 0.9 and IronPython 2.6. Take a look at Harry Pierson’s blog post about this release as well, especially if you’re more into snakes than gemstones.

Try it out

To try out this release:

· Install NET 4.0 Beta 2 or Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2

· Download either IronRuby or IronPython

· Follow any of the many dynamic walkthroughs online. This would be a good start.

Build from source

To build IronPython or IronRuby for .NET 4.0 Beta 2 from source, get the sources from:

· IronPython: CodePlex

· IronRuby: GitHub (direct download)

Note: use the "v4" build configurations.

Quick download links: IronRuby | IronPython | .NET 4.0 Beta 2 | Announcement

VS2010 SKUs simplified

2009-10-22T12:27:00.001-04:00

We have been trying to simplify our product lineup and skus over the past few years for all of our products. Customers want it to be simpler. I have bought software before, and in comparison we have some of the simplest licensing, but we can always do better. Windows 7 has fewer skus, and now VS2010 does as well. Having different skus is important, but the trick is to have the right number.

Too much choice leads to consumer confusion and dissatisfaction. Studies have shown that too many choices leads to a dissatisfied customer. Let’s say you go into a store and there are 100 different types of jeans on sale. You spend some time, pick the ones you like and bring them home (preferably after paying for them.) You will be ok with your selection, but not really happy. You will always have the doubt in your head as to the question if you actually picked the right pair. Perhaps the one with the super special boot leg cut would have been better looking with my sandals. Now that I have you fretting about the jeans you are wearing, lets return to why we are all here.

For VS2010 we have reduced it to three skus. There is still VS Express, but that is free, so it isn’t really a sku, and doesn’t count. (I was going to make a zero reference but Mike Neel is sick of those jokes, and he was kind enough to send me a free token to his new game, which rocks!)

The skus are: (official feature breakdown here)

· Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Professional (MSDN optional): the essential tool for professional development tasks to assist developers in implementing their ideas easily. The basic tool set. If you get MSDN you get time on Azure, and the server products. Also includes TFS and a CAL, and basic unit testing. Nice!

· Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Premium with MSDN: a complete toolset for developers to deliver scalable, high quality applications. All of the above, plus: better testing tools, database dev tools, super debug features, and some architecture stuff. You also get Visio, Project, Office, and Expression Studio for production use. Score!

· Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate with MSDN: the comprehensive suite of application lifecycle management tools for software teams to ensure quality results from design to deployment. Of course all of the above, plus: Wicked architecture tools, and the new lab management infrastructure. Have you seen this? Crazy! This is the full fire hose. Once you see the fullness, you won’t be able to go back. If you are at a lower level, we have a deal that will give you a discount on upgrading to a higher level.

Hopefully this will make it easier to figure out which version you need. There is a plan in place for people with VS2008 to figure out which version they get when they upgrade or renew their MSDN subscription. Please keep an eye for those details. The MSDN site and program has been upgraded, with some new benefits that will be rolled out over the coming months.

Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2 is released

2009-10-22T12:01:00.001-04:00

VS2010 beta 2 has been released. Go get it now. It comes with a go live license, so you can use it in production, and we will support it. You need to understand that it is still a beta though. The RTM date is March 22, 2010, so if you have a project that is going live around then, it might be best to build it with the beta than building it with VS2008. We have committed that there will be a smooth upgrade path from beta2 to RTM so you don’t have to worry about the proper retention of source code, and work items.

I plan on posting some unboxing videos soon, but I wanted to hit some of the top features (at least that I think are my favorite features).

TFS is now much easier to install. You can install on Windows 7, on a desktop PC, and with SQL Express. It takes about 20 minutes now.
There is a new basic profile with TFS that installs the core features, making it super easy to get source control and work item tracking up and running for your team.
There is a new code only profile in the VS editor. When enabled, all the toolboxes, designers, and properties windows are removed. Just you and your code. Love it!
Support for TDD. Intellisense now figures our what you are doing when you refer to a class or method that doesn’t exist yet, and helps you write that test first! Yeah!
Historical Debugging lets you wind the clock back, and see what happened.
Integrate UML modeling. This isn’t your fathers UML. The diagrams are dynamically generated. Think UML for as built, not UML design docs. The diagrams are interactive, letting you set breakpoints and debugging through them, and you can navigate your code with them. This is great when you inherit a strange codebase.
Multimonitor support.

It does safely work side by side VS2008, so you can download it and try it without worrying about anything.

Local Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 Launch Events

2009-10-22T11:40:00.001-04:00

We have just wrapped up the first Windows 7 launch tour. We hit all of the major cities. Now that we have brushed the dust from our boots, we are heading back out and doubling back to hit more local cities. If you weren’t able to make it to one of the big launches you should sign up to make it to one of these local launches. There will be some cool prizes as well. I will be speaking at the Nashville event (Franklin, TN), and the Columbus event. I hope to see you there.

From the official invite…

-------------------------

TechNet & MSDN Events Present:

Highlights from “the New Efficiency” Launch

Join us as we explore how Windows® 7, Windows Server® 2008 R2 and

Exchange Server® 2010 deliver on the new efficiency where cost savings, productivity and innovations come together. At this free event we’ll cover the “best of” content and deliver highlights from “the New Efficiency” Launch events taking place nationwide.

ATTEND this special event and learn about these exciting new products and discover how:

· Windows 7 simplifies everyday tasks, improves productivity and works the way you want.

· Windows Server 2008 R2 delivers new functionality and powerful improvements to the core Windows Server operating system to help organizations increase control, availability, and flexibility for their changing business needs.

· Exchange Server 2010 achieves new levels of reliability, reduces cost and drives productivity.

TechNet Events Presents >
8:30 am - 12:00 pm

SESSIONS INCLUDE

· Introducing Windows 7

· Introduction to Windows Server 2008 R2

· Introducing Exchange Server 2010

Date/Location/Registration
12/2/2009	Louisville, KY
12/3/2009	Mason, OH
12/8/2009	Columbus, OH
12/10/2009	Franklin, TN

MSDN Events Presents >

1:00 pm - 4:30 pm

SESSIONS INCLUDE

· Taking Your Application to the Next Level with Windows 7

· Light up Your Application with Graphics, Multi-touch and Ribbon on Windows 7

· What’s new and changed in Windows Server 2008 R2

Date/Location/Registration
12/2/2009	Louisville, KY
12/3/2009	Mason, OH
12/8/2009	Columbus, OH
12/10/2009	Franklin, TN

Register and attend for your chance to WIN!

Ø Netbook! Dell Mini 10 - US $329.00 (ARV) Approximate Retail Value

Ø Zune! – Zune HD - US $289.00 (ARV)

Ø Games! “Halo 3 ODST” for XBOX 360 US $59.99 (ARV)

Ø Books!

- Windows 7 Inside Out US $49.99 (ARV) - TechNet

- Introducing Windows 7 for Developers US $39.99 (ARV) – MSDN

*No Purchase Necessary. Open only to registered event attendees. Game ends day of event. Must be present to win. For full Official Rules, see event registration desk.

The Terrific Toub Tour Trip

2009-10-19T09:42:00.001-04:00

Stephen Toub is on the Parallel Computing Platform team at Microsoft. Jennifer has convinced him to spend a week on the road in Michigan, Ohio, Kentucky, and Tennessee, speaking to customers and visiting user groups. See her blog for more details on the tour.

He will cover concurrency and tools for how to easily develop parallel solutions. This will be an important part of the framework going forward because of the many core problem. As the number of cores in CPUs increase, we will start to have issues with concurrency. We will also want to write code that leverages that hardware. BUT, writing multithreaded code is very difficult, and is insanely hard to debug. Microsoft’s challenge is to provide a framework as part of the platform to make it easy for developers to build parallel applications, with a great degree of quality and productivity.

The official abstract and bio is below.

Date/time
Location
Registration

Mon 10/26,
9-11am
Microsoft office
2555 Meridian Blvd, Suite 300
Franklin, TN 37067
http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032430034&Culture=en-US

Mon 10/26, 6:30-8:30pm
Microsoft office
2555 Meridian Blvd, Suite 300
Franklin, TN 37067
http://nashparalleldotnet.eventbrite.com/

Tues 10/27,
6-8pm
University of Louisville Campus
J.B. Speed Hall, Room 100
Map
No registration required.

Wed 10/28,
3-5pm
Microsoft office
4605 Duke Dr, Suite 800, Mason, OH 45040-9410
http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032430039&Culture=en-US

Wed 10/28,
6-8pm
MAX Technical Training
4900 Parkway Dr, Suite 160
Mason, OH 45040
Map
https://www.clicktoattend.com/invitation.aspx?code=141786

Thurs 10/29, 9-11am
Microsoft office, Park Center III, Third Floor, 6050 Oak Tree Blvd S, Independence, OH 44131
http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032430040&Culture=en-US

Thurs 10/29, 6:30-8:30pm
Sogeti office at Beacon Place Conference Center
6055 Rockside Woods Blvd, lower level
Independence, OH 44131
To register, please send an email to sam@clevelanddotnet.info with "RSVP" in the subject line.

Fri 10/30,
6-8pm
Microsoft office,
Southfield Town Center, 1000 Town Center Dr., Suite 1930
Southfield, MI 48075
https://www.clicktoattend.com/invitation.aspx?code=142370

Parallel Computing with Visual Studio 2010 and the .NET Framework 4

With the .NET Framework today, correctly introducing concurrency and parallelism into libraries and applications is difficult, time consuming, and error-prone. However, as the hardware industry shifts towards multi-core and manycore processors, the key to high-performance applications is parallelism. The .NET Framework 4 and Visual Studio 2010 offer solutions to help make coding, debugging, and profiling concurrent applications significantly easier. In this talk, we’ll examine Parallel LINQ-to-Objects (PLINQ), the Task Parallel Library (TPL), new coordination and synchronization types, and Visual Studio tooling support in order to provide a look at the next generation of parallel programming with .NET.

Stephen Toub is a Senior Program Manager Lead on the Parallel Computing Platform team at Microsoft, where he spends his days focusing on the next generation of programming models and runtimes for concurrency, parallelism, and asynchrony. Stephen is also a Contributing Editor for MSDN® Magazine, for which he writes the .NET Matters column, and he’s an avid speaker at conferences like PDC, TechEd, and DevConnections. Prior to working on the Parallel Computing Platform, Stephen designed and built enterprise applications for companies such as GE, McGraw-Hill, BankOne, and JetBlue. He was a developer for Microsoft Outlook as well as for the Microsoft Office Solution Accelerators.

“Azure in Action” with Chris Hay

2009-10-12T14:37:00.000-04:00

For some time now I have been working on a book with Chris Hay titled “Azure in Action”. The book will be published by Manning, hopefully around March 2010. We only have a few more chapters to write, and then we start the long editorial process. But I know many of you can not wait until March to get the book.

This is where the MEAP comes in. MEAP stands for Manning Early Access Program, and it allows readers to read the first chapter for free, or buy the book now. If you buy the book early you get access to the draft chapters as they are written, and get access to an authors forum to provide us feedback on the book, and get questions answered.

I was in the middle of writing another book for Manning when I mentioned that I was surprised they didn’t have a dedicated book for each part of the Windows Azure Platform. Later I found out this simple little comment set off a flurry (well, maybe a passel) of activity in setting up the other books in the series, and finding the write authors. They had arranged for Chris Hay to write the Azure book, and he was kind enough to invite me to help him write it.

It has been a blast (but a lot of work) so far, and I can’t wait to see it on paper.

There are currently three chapters online now, and we are close to releasing a new set of chapters. If you are interested in Azure, this may be the book for you.

ARCast.TV - Caleb Jenkins On Dependency Injection

2009-10-11T08:12:00.000-04:00

I caught up with Caleb Jenkins at the MVP summit. We commandeered a conference room, and talked about how all developers need to care about architecture. Developers should think of architecture at the code level and the benefits of Dependency Injection.

ARCast.TV - Caleb Jenkins On Dependency Injection

Article Published in Perspectives on IASA Magazine

2009-10-10T14:25:00.000-04:00

A while ago I wrote a quick article titled “Three Scenarios: When the Cloud Makes Sense”. The article goes into three core scenarios where cloud computing make sense. Not everything should be run in the cloud, and I wanted highlight a few times when it is a clear win to do so.

The role of the person making strategic decisions (lead dev, architect, or IT manager) is to look at their portfolio and decide what system benefits from moving some or all of it to the cloud. The benefit could be a cost savings, reduction in management overhead, or enabling a use of the software that wasn’t possible in the limited on-premises data centers we have.

Please check out the article.

Real World Azure Road Show web cast

2009-10-09T15:36:00.000-04:00

We recently wrapped up a 17 city road show covering real work experiences with Azure. We had both an IT Pro session, and a developer session. While we were in Nashville we webcasted the event. If you weren’t able to get to one of the events, now is your chance to see the recordings. We cover the architecture, and development of solutions running on Azure, as well as how to manage and provisions the solutions. Just because the app is running in the cloud doesn’t mean it doesn’t need to be managed. You just aren’t spending as much time managing the underlying infrastructure.

You can replay the videos, or download them for offline viewing. The IT Pro one has also been published to TechNet here.

TechNet Events Presents: Real World Azure

https://www.livemeeting.com/cc/mseventsbmo/view?id=1032425946&role=attend&pw=WE45G3T7

MSDN Events Presents: Real World Azure - Live Meeting

https://www.livemeeting.com/cc/mseventsbmo/view?id=1032425948&role=attend&pw=E45W7SUT

Windows 7 Under the Hood Talk

2009-10-02T19:24:00.001-04:00

I have been really impressed with Windows 7 since the early internal builds I was allowed to use. I am still constantly amazed how a new version of a product (of any product from any company) can have more features, have a larger kernel, support more hardware, and be faster, lighter, and easier to use. I don’t think that has every happened before.

I decided, just for fun, that I wanted to learn why this is the case. Did we remove some long forgotten sleep loop in the kernel? Or did we just delete all of the verbose comments and validation checks?

It turns out it was none of those things. And so I set out to put together a talk on the subject. I just think the internals is very interesting, and insight into how things work can make troubleshooting easier.

While I do put a lot of time into preparing a new talk (60-80 hours), I still like to beta test a talk with a smaller, intimate audience. David Giard provided me with such an audience with his internal user group at Sogeti in Michigan. During the Real World Azure Roadshow, he invited in to try out my talk. I figured, worst case was I could just leave town if it didn’t go well.

I think it went fairly well for a maiden cruise. I have a lot of polish to add. After the meeting, he invited me on his Technology and Friends webcast. He has published the episode, and you should go check it out.

Dave has invented a new drinking game. Every time I use a metaphor in a talk, you have to take a drink. Don’t blame me, he thought it up. That is what the reference is to when he grabs my water for a sip near the end.

http://www.davidgiard.com/2009/09/30/BrianPrinceOnWindows7UnderTheHood.aspx

CINNUG is hosting an ASP.NET MVC Firestarter

2009-09-25T11:48:00.000-04:00

Just a quick post in case you are interested. CINNUG has been doing a series of special events. This one is a firestarter on ASP.NET MVC. Firestarters are great for getting up to speed on a technology you don’t know anything about. You can walk in the door knowing nothing about MVC, and walk out with a good grasp.

From their announcement:

CINNUG is hosting an ASP.NET MVC Firestarter event on Saturday, Oct. 17^th at the MS office in Mason, OH (near Cincinnati). I was hoping that the people on this list that believe this could be a good event would please publicize the event on their blogs and/or tweet about it. This will be the third firestarter event that CINNUG has put on and the previous two have been successful with some people coming in from TN and MI to attend these one day, focused events.

Registration Link: https://www.clicktoattend.com/invitation.aspx?code=140750

Info:

If you know nothing about ASP.NET MVC, then this event is for you. It’s a “from the ground up” look at how to get started with this alternative to ASP.NET Webform development. We'll be covering a number of topics including

Intro to ASP.NET MVC

Intro to Testing ASP.NET MVC

Intro to JQuery

Intro to ASP.NET MVC on Azure

Panel Discussion: Web Forms vs ASP.NET MVC

Another Event: WinMoDevCamp

2009-09-24T19:44:00.001-04:00

My buddy Jon Box will be presenting at the WinMoDevCamp in Memphis. The event is on 9/29 from 6p to 8p, which is next Tuesday.

From the announcement:

We're really excited to announce a barcamp style event, called WinMoDevCamp, for the upcoming Microsoft Windows Mobile 6.5 OS! The event inspired by BarCamp, SuperHappyDevHouse, and MacHack, iPhoneDevCamp and préDevCamp to develop applications (local and web based) for mobile devices that run the Windows Mobile 6.5 Operating System. Attendees will include mobile developers, web developers, .NET Developers, UI designers, and testers, all working together. Development projects will include both solo and team efforts. While some attendees will wish to work solo during the event, we encourage attendees to team up, based on expertise, to work in ad-hoc project development teams. All attendees should be prepared to work on a development project during the event. Attendees will be able to: Learn about the upcoming platform, the roadmap, and the launch program. Create new applications for the Windows Mobile Platform. Migrate existing mobile applications from the iPhone, Blackberry and Palm Pre to the Windows Mobile Platform Create applications to support Windows Enterprise Applications Learn about Race To Market Challenge, a contest for mobile developers where someone could earn fame and big prizes. Eat a good dinner. Bring your laptop, loaded with VS 2008, a Windows Mobile 6.1 SDK Refresh and Windows Mobile 6.5 DTK. Otherwise, follow along on a friend's laptop, or just listen along.

Event URL: http://mnug.net/blogs/news/archive/2009/09/09/next-meeting-tuesday-september-29-2009-6-00-pm.aspx

Event info on User Group Support Services: https://www.usergroupsupportservices.com/UGEventView.ugss?EventID=7671

Event: Top 5 Ways To Supercharge Your Custom SharePoint Solutions

2009-09-24T09:04:00.001-04:00

This event will feature the top 5 industry standard practices for creating and managing quality controlled custom solutions built on SharePoint. If your organization has struggled with how to best implement a custom line of business applications in a predictable and structured process, this event is for you.

During this session you’ll learn how Application Lifecycle Management tools and techniques can be applied to the process of creating custom web parts and other SharePoint additions. These techniques will vastly improve the quality and predictability of all your custom line of business applications being delivered through SharePoint.

Date

Location

Register

Southfield, MI

Tuesday, September 29, 2009

Microsoft Office
1000 Town Center

Suite 1930
Southfield, MI 48075

Register Here

Dallas, TX

Tuesday, September 29, 2009

Microsoft Office

7000 SR-161 (George Bush Turnpike)
Irving, TX 75039

Register Here

Minneapolis, MN

Tuesday, September 29, 2009

Microsoft Office

8300 Norman Center Dr.

Suite 950
Bloomington, MN 55437

Register Here

Downers Grove, IL

Tuesday, September 29, 2009

Microsoft Office

3025 Highland Pkwy.

Suite 300
Downers Grove, IL 60515

Register Here

Register now for the Software Engineering 101 Conference

2009-08-31T15:12:00.001-04:00

Jim Holmes has announced that his latest brain child conference is open for registration. Of course, registration is free.

So what is it? You don’t need to ask. If Jim is doing it, then it’s worth your time. Ok, if you don’t buy that, then how about a whole dedicated to learning how to better engineer software. All software, not just .NET stuff.

The event will be at the Microsoft office, near Polaris, in Columbus, Ohio.

Event Date:Wednesday, September 23, 2009
Time: 8:00 AM - 5:30 PM

Welcome Time:07:30 AM Eastern Time

Location:

Microsoft Corporation
8800 Lyra Dr.
Polaris Center, Suite 400
Columbus, OH 43240
Location Website

Agenda:

Time	Session	Speaker
8:15 – 8:20	Intro
8:20 – 9:30	Principles of Object Oriented Programming
9:35 – 10:45	SOLID	Jon Kruger
11:00 – 11:15	Understanding Code Metrics	Jim Holmes
11:20 – 12:30	Production Debugging	Scott Walker
12:30 – 1:30	Lunch
1:30 – 5:00	Hands on Test Driven Development	Leon Gersing and others
5:00 – 5:15	Closing remarks

Get all of the details over at Jim’s blog (which is where I stole the agenda table from), and register at http://is.gd/2wruN.

Presentation: 5 Frameworks you can’t live without

2009-08-31T14:09:00.001-04:00

While I was at devLink I presented a talk called "5 frameworks you can’t live without.” I wanted to talk to people about how to not be a plumber, and how to reduce the code you write to only what only someone like you can write. I also wanted to share some frameworks that I know a lot of people are using and having success with.

This deck is very unsophisticated, and it has a very interesting origination story. I will be happy to share it with anyone who buys me a drink. Big thanks to Mike Wood for helping me with it.

As a whole, devLink was a blast. It is always fun to attend it. If you didn’t get to go you should mark it on your calendar for next year.

Need some Azure training?

2009-08-31T13:46:00.001-04:00

My good friend Wes Brock just let me know that Wintellect will be offering a 2 day training course on how to build applications for Azure for $499. The course will be delivered by Paul Mehner, online. This is great news, so you don’t have to travel to sit in on the class. The training will be on October 21-22, 2009.

The course will cover:

Section 1 - Introduction and Overview of the Azure Services Platform

· Intro to the Azure Services Platform

· Intro to Windows Azure Services

· Intro to .NET Services

· Intro to SQL Azure (future)

· Service Registration and setup

Section 2 - Windows Azure Services

· Visual Studio “Cloud Service” Projects

· Configuration of your Windows Azure application

· Deployment of your Windows Azure application

· Load Balancing Infrastructure

· Use of Azure with non-Microsoft technologies (future)

Lab 1a: Setup of your Windows Azure Account

Lab 1b: Develop and deploy your first Windows Azure Application

Section 3 - Microsoft .NET Azure Services and Windows Communication Foundation

· WCF Service Contracts

· WCF Bindings for Microsoft .NET Azure Services

· WCF Security for Microsoft .NET Azure Services

· Introduction to the Service Bus Environment

· Deployment of your Azure .NET Services

Lab 2a: Setup of your Azure .NET Services Account

Lab 2b: Develop and deploy your first Azure .NET Service

Section 4 - Microsoft .NET Service Bus

· Architecture

· Relay Service

· Integration with Access and Orchestration Services

· Service Name Resolution

· Service Registry and Discoverability

· Supported Protocols and Ports

· Support for QOS using WS-ReliableMessaging (*currently unsupported)

· Message Queuing

· Message Routing

Lab 3a: Develop and deploy your second Azure .NET Service

Lab 3b: Add queuing functionality

Lab 3c: Add routing functionality

Section 5 - Microsoft .NET Relay Service (part of .NET Services)

· Architecture

· WCF Relay Bindings

Section 6 - Understanding Identity and Claims-based Security

· Claims Based Security Intro

· Identity Providers

o Integrated

o Live

o Card Spaces

o X.509 Certificates

o Others

· Claims & Claim Transformations

Lab 6a: Modify your service application to make it “claims aware”

Lab 6b: Create Card Space cards for your application

Lab 6c: Create X509 certificate for your application

Section 7 – Securing Your Service with Microsoft Access Control Services

· Architecture of ACS

· Registration of Identity Providers

· Claim Transformations

Lab 7a: Establish an Identity Provider for your service application

Lab 7b: Create claim transformations to support your service application

Section 8 – Error Handling and Diagnostics

· Exceptions and Faults

· Impact of Exceptions on your service application

· Soap Faults

· Creating and throwing Faults

· Fault Declarations

· Unhandled exceptions and the Dispatcher

· Message Logging

· Event Logging

· Tracing

· Performance Counters

Lab 8a: Adding custom faults to your service application / processing service faults

Lab 8b: Add and interpret message logging and diagnostics from your service and sender applications

Community Leadership Summit Results

2009-08-28T22:29:00.001-04:00

I want to thank everyone that came out to the Community Leadership Summit in Nashville. If you missed it, don’t worry. There will be another one around CodeMash time.

After the opening comments and lunch, we brain stormed a series of interesting conversations, and then scheduled them in a grid. Whomever came up with the session idea had to act as the proctor, and take notes. Each session lasted about 30 minutes. At the end of all of the sessions, each moderator presented the results of their session. Matt Hester recorded these summaries, and they should be available shortly. Until then, here are the notes. Unfortunately, I don’t have time to enter them into the local community wiki, so if someone wants to do handle that, that would be fabulous. Otherwise, I will try to get to in in October.

At this point I am just transcribing the notes. They are not complete. Many times I don’t know what the intention of the note is. If you know, please leave a comment here, or update the wiki (when that is working.)

Session One: Alternative Meeting Formats

Hands on meetings with the topic
Geek Dinner : meet out after the event for dinner. Everyone eats Dutch. Great way to socialize and network.
Fishbowl style: I know a lot of groups that meet this way. It is a great way to have a discussion about a topic and keep the conversation flowing.
Give tickets out for participation for the meeting prizes.
Code + Coffee : About 10 people show up before work at a local coffee shop to pair on some code they are interested in. No set topic. Bring some real code, a pet project, or just something you want to look at.
Virtual Meetings : Can’t find enough people in your area that are passionate about what you want to talk about? Start a virtual meeting. Using Facebook, Linked In, and services like Live Meeting or Oovoo, you can have your meeting no matter where people live.
Lightening Talks : A series of very short and targeted talks by a series of speakers. This is a great way to help new speakers get their foot in the door without a lot of stress and prep work.
Open Spaces / Community Courtyard : These are very popular, and most people are now familiar with the approach.

Session Two: Engaging the Open Source Community

The project needs a strong leader
A good project is easy to patch
Have your team adopt a project
Tool availability can be an issue
Popularity of a project

Presence
Need
Caretaking
Ease
Source included on install

Session Three: Growing user group membership

Membership drive

Have a minimum amount of new members for the big prize

Appropriate Venue

Size
Location
Perhaps multiple locations on different days

Meet the needs of the community

job
network
learn

Greet and include new members
Paid membership (need corp buy in)
Consistency
Use email to announce meetings

corporate
public service announcements
collect email of attendees

Flyers handed out about next months meeting
Golden rule: always have the next three meetings planned out
Bring a buddy, get first pick @ prizes

Session Four: Conquering the Digital Divide

CAP in Cleveland
How to bridge
Library free classes

use local community centers

How to find passion around cause

community events
after events

Work local individuals

work with Wal-mart

Use the tech community as a resource

Session Five: Providing value for event/UG attendees

Networking and relationships
People appreciate whenever they can contribute
Topic Variety

Session Six: Non Profit Status. When. Why. How.

Money

2 board members on the bank account

both have to sign each check
limits are determined in the bylaws

Organization

Board of directors
Treasurer
Code of ethics
By Laws
Articles of incorporation

Submit to the IRS

Get temp tax number
can be used for sponsorship
Temp tax number will become EIN

When?

If you are taking money
Liability

Session Seven: Speaking More Better

Role Models

Seth Godin
Scott Hanselman

Dramatic volume and pauses
Play a character
Slide management (not too many)
Should be conversational
Reading: Presenting to Win
Find self confidence (You are good enough)
Audience size shouldn’t matter
Join Toastmasters
Practice, then practice again

Prep time is essential
Start with lightening talks

define your success factors
eval comments are more important than scores
Movie: Comedian (Jerry Seinfeld)

It is about honing your craft

Don’t submit a talk because you want to learn a topic or subject
Show the demo, then how to build it

Session Eight: Running a Lean Event

Do more with less
Prioritize spending with a list of everything at the event. As money comes in, move down the list.
Food is the largest variable cost

Surveys have shown 85% would prefer a free event with no food over a paid event with lunch
Plan for 45-60 minutes for people to go get food. There should be options close. A food court, or bring in a caterer that will take cash on the spot.
Do snacks only

You can charge a little to cover hard costs

$25 is just enough for people to make an easy spend decision, and also big enough to make sure they show up
Do a budget, with fixed and variable costs

Get T+Cs when people pay for a ticket from creative commons
Pizza isn’t required at a user group. You can meet without food.
Perhaps dues at a meeting
When trying to get a sponsor to renew for a new year, or the next event, send them the info with an invoice to make it easy for them to pay
Tshirts are usually a low priority at an event, and can be expensive

Have something different. Perhaps tall glasses, $1 each

Electronic session guides instead of expensive color printed guides
Location: find free space: MS Office, local college, community centers

Something free, especially if they don’t require to be the catering provider

Beg/borrow projectors and screens so you don’t have to rent them.
If using a college, have student org sponsor you. They tend to have lower fees than an outside organization
Tap your network for resources
Liberally use the resources available to you at your company (use the photo copier, etc.)

Session Eight: Women in Tech

Digi Girls
Digital Eve
Start young
Channel 9
Games
TV Shows

Session Nine: Sponsorship ROI

Cool by association
Being elite is more marketable
training/brain dump
Reduce investment

Employee pays for part, or takes time off if the company pays

Community events build experience, which improves their marketability as a consultant
Networking … Local – people travel
Retain top talent
Email list

sales
recruiting
marketing

Register for the Windows 7 and R2 online FireStarter event

2009-08-19T08:46:00.001-04:00

If you want to learn more about what is new in Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2, you should attend this event. We will get you up to speed on the latest features, and how you can delight your users with some of these new features:

DirectAccess, Group Policy and PowerShell, new Internet Explorer 8 features.
New BitLocker, AppLocker and User Account Control Features
Easy Windows 7 deployment

Direct Access is great. It allows me to VPN into our corporate network without the VPN hoops. It sets up in the background, on demand, based on what resources I want to access. It also allows a remote IT Admin to manage my box (for example, to push a critical patch) at any time, not only when I finally VPN in.

PowerShell is also pretty fantastic, for both IT Pros and developers. It is a very powerful shell that is object oriented, and has full access into the whole platform, so you automate a lot of your work.

The list goes on and on.

You can register here: http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032423124&Culture=en-US

Register for the online FireStart for Silverlight 3 and Expression 3 event

2009-08-19T08:40:00.001-04:00

If you are looking for a way to learn more about Silverlight, Expression, RIA Services, and the related toolkits, here is your chance.

On September 17th, we will be hosting an online event, that will be keynoted by Scott Guthrie. But that’s not all. There will also be presentations by Tim Heuer, Brad Abrams, Karl Shifflett and others.

You can register at http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032423163&Culture=en-US.

Community Leadership Summit

2009-07-30T10:39:00.001-04:00

You are invited to the Community Leadership Summit. Our goal is to gather together anyone who is rabid about the community: all of the community leaders, speakers, and contributors. We want to get together and share best practices, and learn from each other. This is OPEN. We aren’t just talking about .NET user groups. We are talking Ruby, PHP, Python, OSS, Linux, ALM, and anything else you can think of. It doesn’t have to be a big formal user group; your community might be the small group of folks that crack code at a coffee shop at 7am. Whatever it is, come on over. This summit is held twice a year, once in the summer, and once in the winter.

The event will be held at Jack’s Bar-B-Que, from noon until 4pm on August 12^th, 2009. The address is 416 Broadway, Nashville, TN 37203. Their website is http://jacksbarbque.com.

Register Here: http://tr.im/uKDt

We are holding the summit the day before devLink because we know many leaders will already be in one place, making it easier on people to travel. The winter edition will be held the day before CodeMash in January, in Sandusky, Ohio. If you need a place to stay, or help driving down, please reach out. There are plenty of people going, and who would love to share a ride.

One thing we have learned over the past few years is that the community doesn’t have boundaries, and we don’t want any either. But pants, of some sort, are required. We want there to be open sharing amongst all of the groups, so that we can learn from each other’s successes and failures. We want to discuss how you grow the group, should you want to grow the group, how do you reach out to people that don’t know the community exists, how do you groom new speakers and leaders, and if or how you get sponsors for your meetings. You will also be able to share how you put on an event like a bar camp and learn from other organizers.

The day will start with lunch at noon, where you can mingle, chat, and catch up with the people you know, and maybe spill some BBQ sauce on someone you don’t know. The spill creates an opportunity to chat with the person. That’s a little networking tip from us to you for free.

We will then move into some opening comments and some lightening talks on some cross cutting topics we think would be useful in getting the discussions going from there. The rest of the day will be about you and the community. We expect an ‘open spaces’ like event where we have some topics of discussion, and a freewheeling time flittering around from one group to another.

While Microsoft might be sponsoring the food, this has nothing to do with us. So what is our evil plan? Well, glad you asked. Our jobs are to help the community and the easiest way to help you is to help you help us help you. We also know that a strong community is an important aspect to having a healthy industry, which serves us all. Plus, it’s a great way to get the boss to pay for a meal out of our budget. Wink Wink.

Get this. There will be no projectors, no screens, no laptops, no wifi. Only scratch pads, you, and a giant mess of the best Bar-B-Que* in town. The audience is wide open. If you know someone who fits the description above, please forward it to them. Twitter it, blog it, sky write it, we don’t care. We also don’t care where they are from; Cincinnati, Grand Rapids, Boise, or Miami. And we don’t care what role they play in the community; leader, helper, speaker, attendee, muffin eater; doesn’t matter.

We do have a limit on space and food, so please register quickly, and before you share the link with other people. We would hate for you to miss out because you’re THAT selfless. Being an attendee of devLink is not a requirement, but there are tickets left if you are interested.

* We will have food for people who have alternative diet needs. Please check the box on the registration form.

Scrum and TFS

2009-07-24T18:28:00.001-04:00

Do you want to learn how to use Scrum and TFS together? Do you want to learn from someone who has ‘been there, and done that?’

Check out this event, which is being put on by the Chattanooga TN .NET user group.

Details:

August 6th, 6:00 PM
4080 Jenkins Rd., Chattanooga, TN
(West Building)

Agile software development is quickly becoming the approach of choice for
companies who want to deliver quality software quickly, and the Scrum process is by far the most popular of these methodologies. Many have found value in coupling their existing development environment with the principles and practices of Scrum and Agile. This free two hour seminar will cover the basics of the Scrum process and demonstrate how to implement them using Visual Team Suite Foundation Server to create collaborative, productive Agile development teams.

Dinner will be provided and we will have door prizes to give away limited, so register today.

http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032421860

MVC4WPF Launches on 7/23

2009-07-20T14:15:00.001-04:00

ICC worked with the WPF team to develop a framework for bringing MVC to WPF, called MVC4WPF.

MVC4WPF is a combination of code automation, efficient software architecture, and a
maintenance-centric design to writing software that reduces both development and long term costs. It promotes methodologies that get the best value out of junior developers while gaining all the advantages of mentoring by senior developers. It uses Microsoft’s latest and greatest development technologies, including the .NET 3.5 platform, Visual Studio 2008, and the Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF), to give you greater transparency into the development process at a very low overhead.

ICC has released it as open source, and will be publishing the code on CodePlex. The code will be available after the launch.

Information Control Corporation and Microsoft would like to invite you to the MVC4WPF launch on July 23rd.

The event will include breakfast starting at 8:30 a.m. at the Microsoft Building located at:
8800 Lyra Drive Polaris Center, Suite 400, Columbus, Ohio, 43240.

Please RSVP for the event here:

https://www.clicktoattend.com/invitation.aspx?code=139254

Thrive for Developers is online

2009-07-07T10:45:00.001-04:00

A little while back I wrote about a site called Thrive for IT Pros. We have launched a similar site for developers called Thrive for Developers. Microsoft has always been good about giving the information and tools developers need to build great software. Thrive is a way for us to go beyond that. To help you learn the tools you need for your career, how to be a better developer, and do more with what you have already.

I was really excited to be asked to be a part of this launch. Many of you have seen the Soft Skillz talk that I have done over the past year. They have also brought together a lot of content from the community, as well as tools to help you find that next job.

That Soft Skillz talk originated out of a farewell talk I did as I left my team at Quick Solutions. It focused on retelling the lessons we had learned over my time there, so I could pass on some of our culture and tribal knowledge to the next generation of the team.

The talk evolved, and became very popular. When I heard about the new Thrive site, I pitched it to the team, to see if it could be part of the content. I was going to turn the talk into a screencast anyway, so why not have a place to host it? They accepted, and I started breaking the show down into 7 minute chunks. Way faster than an 8 minute show, and of course 6 minutes would too short, you wouldn’t even be able to get your heart rate going..

The first four episodes are up:

Driving Your Career - Soft Skills to Move You Forward

Sit shotgun with Brian Prince in “Driving Your Career” – a 32-week screencast series that explores the new skills developers need to thrive. Brian will tackle relevant topics including quick learning techniques, how to manage your career, how to build consensus, and the always-tricky task of talking to humans. Brian will share his expertise of being a manager, a consultant, and many other roles over his career, to help you succeed in yours.

Week 1 - It’s always darkest before the dawn | WMV MP3

Week 2 - How I learned that humans don’t care about technology | WMV MP3

Week 3 - Always have a mentor | WMV MP3

Week 4 - Body language doesn’t use CSS | WMV MP3

So please check them out, and even more importantly, forward the link to anyone you know that is struggling in their career, or in finding a job.

Windows 7 Release Date Announced!

2009-06-03T07:34:00.001-04:00

Steve Guggenheimer announced the release dates of Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 at Computex 2009 in Tapei. We will be RTM’ing Windows 7 in the second half of July, with general availability (that means it’s in stores, etc.) by October 22nd. Windows Server 2008 R2 will be available at the same time.

This is awesome news! Warm up your download tools, it’s not far away.

Everyone I know has been impressed with, and really likes Windows 7, even some of the most critical people I know. I think this is due to the changes in how the Windows team developed the OS, as well as how open they were to feedback, and their willingness to make changes. If you weren’t reading the Engineering Windows 7 blog, you should go there now, and read all of the posts. They are all quite fascinating.

I got to be part of the IQ team, which is a very small part, but it was still fun. I would be given weekly builds to install on my machines, and to test out. While the Beta was of a very high quality, for a beta, I could see the continuing improvements in quality and features in every build. I would get giddy every time I would get the email that a new build was available, then spend the next half day downloading it, and installing it on all of my machines.

I am looking forward to stabilizing on one consistent build for a while. That is of course until they start on Windows 8. :)

Martin Shoemaker and I discuss VS2010 & UML on Arcast.tv

2009-05-27T10:06:00.001-04:00

A while ago Martin and I sat down to discuss UML and how it is making a come back in VS2010 for architects. We had a great chat, and we learned how this isn’t your grandpa’s UML anymore. The way the VS team has implemented it is much more functional to everyone on the team besides the Big Up Front Planning Dinosaur. It will help you understand the lay of the land for that large system you inherited, allowing you to more easily see what is going on.

http://channel9.msdn.com/shows/ARCast.TV/ARCastTV-Martin-Shoemaker-discusses-UML-in-VSTS2010/

nPlus1.org hosts their third summit

2009-05-27T10:00:00.001-04:00

nPlus1.org is hosting it's third Architecture Summit on June 10th at the Microsoft office in Nashville, TN (Franklin). The topic of this summit will be Patterns and Principles.

Session One: Software Patterns

Patterns are an important tool to use as architects and developers. They provide a common vocabulary for us to design with, as well as a common approach to a common problem. Come learn about useful patterns, and how to use them in your everyday code.

Session Two: How I Learned To Love Dependency Injection

Dependency Injection is one of those scary topics that most developers avoid. It sounds all ‘high-falootin’ and complex. It’s not. Really. We wouldn’t lie. It’s a great way to manage complexity in your system, and a great way to make your system so much more testable. And isn’t that what we all want?

Each session will be followed by open discussions periods.

A catered lunch will be provided starting at noon when the welcome time begins.

Ian McDonald is coming to Columbus next week!

2009-05-20T09:55:00.001-04:00

Ian McDonald is the director and general manager of the Windows Server Group. He will be travelling through Ohio, and will be speaking at the Columbus Exchange & Windows User Group (CEWUG). The group meets at the Columbus Microsoft office. He will be talking about the experience of developing Windows.

Agenda

5:30 to 6:05: Welcome time; meet the MS steering committee, pizza and beverages
6:05 to 7:05: An inside perspective of managing the Windows code base.
5 minute break
7:10 to 8:15: Finish, the intricacies of the people, process and technology of creating Windows Server.

Where:

8800 Lyra Dr, Suite 400 Columbus, OH 43240

When:

Wednesday: May 27, 2009 5:30 to 8:15 PM

ArcReady is coming to Grand Rapids, MI

2009-04-13T11:32:00.001-04:00

So, you live in GR, and you want to go to ArcReady, but Detroit is just too far away? Then rest easy my friend. With some great help from Chris Woodruff, and the great folks at RCM Technologies, we are bringing ArcReady to Grand Rapids. The www.arcready.com site should be updated soon. The link to register is

http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032413886&Culture=en-US.

For information on what the sessions will be about, check out my post from last week.

nPlus1.org is giving away $250

2009-04-09T13:41:00.001-04:00

nPlus1.org is on a hunt for a new look. The site has really taken off over the past six months, and they are ready for a facelift.

Go design a new look, and submit it. First prize is $250 to Best Buy and a copy of Vista Ultimate. There are other prizes as well.

Their site is built on Graffiti CMS, and you will need to either provide a template, or other materials to easily upgrade the site.

Take a look at the official rules and requirements at http://nplus1.org/faceliftcontest/.

Upcoming events in the area

2009-04-08T11:16:00.000-04:00

Mike Wood and Jennifer Marsman put together this list of events in the area.

I often get asked how people know about the events. It actually becomes sort of all over the place. There is the MSDN Events page, communitymegaphone.com, the web pages of your local user groups, word of mouth, word of social networking site, word of twitter, etc. There isn’t one place to rule them all. While that seems unfortunate, I don’t that is achievable, or worthwhile. The goal should be to announce the events in as many channels as possible. You don’t seen an ad for a movie just at the movie theatre, do you?

Any way, on to the list:

Event	Event Date	Website
Cincinnati Silverlight Firestarter	3/28/2009	http://cinnug.org/
West Michigan .NET University	4/4/2009	http://dodn.org/WestMichiganDotNetU/
Central Ohio Day of .NET	4/18/2009	http://cinnug.org/cododn/
Lansing Give Camp	4/24/2009-4/26/2009	http://www.lansinggivecamp.org/
Kalamazoo X Conference	4/25/2009	http://www.kalamazoox.org/
Stir Trek	5/8/2009	http://www.stirtrek.com/
Lansing Tech Fest (Open Space)	5/30/2009	http://www.LansingTechFest.org (website not up yet)
Cincinnati ORM Firestarter	6/13/2009	No URL yet?
CodeStock	6/26/2009-6/27/2009	http://www.codestock.org/
Ann Arbor Give Camp	7/17/2009-7/19/2009	http://michigangivecamp.org/cms/AnnArbor/
Columbus Give Camp	7/17/2009-7/19/2009	No URL yet?
Lansing Day of .NET	8/1/2009	http://www.dayofdotnet.org (Lansing site not yet)
devLink	8/13/2009-8/15/2009	http://www.devlink.net/

Learn Lean Processes with LeanDog

2009-04-08T10:09:00.001-04:00

LeanDog is an interesting company. They are located in Cleveland, on a barge. Yes, a barge, on the water. They run an agile shop, and deliver software solutions for their customers.

The great thing is that they open up their space to a whole host of community events. I love it when companies ‘get’ why they should support and adopt the community. Jon, the founder, has an amazing amount of passion for agile practices, and experience helping teams adopt them.

TDD is an amazing practice. It has had a huge impact on how software is developed today. It has shifted how tech teams look at writing software, and has dramatically increased the initial quality of the software, and reduced the long term maintenance costs as well.

The trick with it is that it is very hard to learn, and takes at least six months if you are learning it by reading books and blogs. It is just one of those skills that you need to do with someone to fully get. You can reduce the learning time by doing this. If you are trying to learn TDD you need to find someone to work with, and spend some time with them

LeanDog will be offering some training later this month, "Test Driven Development & Refactoring in C#”. They will cover what TDD is, design and refactoring skills, as well as testing skills that you need.

My two good friends, Nate Hoellein and Corey Haines will be the instructors. The course does cost $1995 for the three days, but that is a small price to pay for being in a room with these two guys for three days. The training is on April 21,22 & 23rd. The cost includes parking, equipment, and food. Dancing bears are extra.

Check out www.leandog.com for all of the gory details.

Windows 7 Beta to RC Guidance

2009-04-08T10:05:00.000-04:00

THIS IS NOT AN ANNOUNCEMENT ABOUT WHEN THE RC WILL BE AVAILABLE!

Many people have been running the beta of Windows 7 for a while now, and we have gotten some great feedback. I have been running weekly internal builds since build 7000 went public, and it gets better every time. I, personally, have been loving my experience with Win7.

At some point in the future, we will be releasing a Release Candidate (RC) for Windows 7. Many of you with Windows 7 Beta installed will be sorely tempted to just upgrade to the RC. I can understand why, as I do build-to-build upgrades on my machines every week. It saves all that setting up, installing, and what not that you have to do to take a machine from bare metal to something that is productive for you.

PLEASE, use Windows Easy Transfer, save off your files, and then do a fresh install. We ask you do this mainly so we can test a real world scenario. You CAN do a build-to-build upgrade, but that is not a scenario we are trying to test, and the point of an RC is to get a broad sense of what is going on in the “REAL WORLD.(TM)”

Am I the only one that thinks ‘type mismatch’ from my old Apple IIe basic days when I see the trademark symbol?

When I do build-to-build, it takes a few hours as the files and settings are migrated, so an upgrade doesn’t save you all that much time from a fresh install. When I have been doing fresh installs (at least one of my machines per new build), I have been using Live mesh to do all of the heavy lifting. Here is what I do:

- Install OS
- Join Domain
- Install Office 2007 and VSTS 2008
- Install Live Mesh
- Let is sync for a while
- Install little tools (Live Essentials, ISO mounter, and FoxIt Reader are the first)
- Install twitter client. :)

Another great path we would like you to try is to upgrade from an existing Windows Vista machine. Please report issues via the connect.Microsoft.com site. This allows us to channel the feedback to the correct team, and allows you to see what other people are reporting.

Copy the contents of the ISO to a flash drive, and install off of that. It’s super fast.

A few notes that all of your should already know:

- Don’t run BETA software on any machine that is important to your productivity.
- Don’t do an upgrade on a machine before you have backed up the important data.

To get the scoop on this whole scenario, and the instructions for doing a build-to-build upgrade, check out http://blogs.msdn.com/e7/archive/2009/04/07/delivering-a-quality-upgrade-experience.aspx.

PS. The good news is that it will contain IE8RTM and be able to run the Azure SDK.

TechNet Unleashed – Windows Server 2008 R2

2009-04-07T16:39:00.001-04:00

Session 1: Windows Server 2008 R2 – Optimize your Time

Get a jump start on your peers with Windows Server 2008 R2 by joining us for this no nonsense technical session, where we will discuss the critical improvements in the next version of Windows Server. Some have argued that, given the impressive scope of new functionality in Windows Server 2008 R2, it should not be an “R2” release, but rather should be given a completely new name. They point to features such as Direct Access, Branch Caching, Live Migration, Powershell 2.0, and VDI that will help you cut down on the amount of time you spend doing mundane tasks, reduce end user frustration and support headaches, and give your mobile workforce a competitive edge through ubiquitous access to company data. There’s a good chance that by attending this session you’ll find a way to save time and money with Windows Server 2008 R2, and so you’ll get the time you spend with us back many times over.

Session 2: Windows 7 – Maximize Your Potential

In designing Windows 7, the engineering team had a clear focus on what we call ‘the fundamentals': performance, application compatibility, device compatibility, reliability, security and battery life. Early reviews of Windows 7 seem to indicate that the choice to focus on the fundamentals is resonating well with many users and professionals. And, IT professionals will further benefit from the enhancements to manageability and security. You’ll also learn how your investments in testing and evaluating Windows Vista will pay off in the transition to Windows 7. Come see firsthand what all the buzz is about in this demo-intensive session where we explore the UI improvements, performance gains, and manageability enhancements in the next client operating system from Microsoft.

Session 3: Internet Explorer 8 – Get Excited About the Browser Again

Internet Explorer is currently the most widely used browser in business, and while we’ve seen nice incremental improvements to IE in recent history, we haven’t seen as many truly earth shattering changes. Well, many agree that the next release of IE, Internet Explorer 8, provides the most compelling upgrade to IE in many years. In a typical day, users spend 2 hours or more per day in the browser, so significant improvements here can have tremendous impact on productivity and the way we work. The browser needs to be thought of in the same terms as an operating system—it has to be rich, robust, interoperable, easy to use and secure. Internet Explorer 8 is a browser that meets these needs and more for users, enterprises, IT professionals and developers alike. Come learn how the new improvements, too numerous to mention here, are driving many to get excited about the browser again.

WHO SHOULD ATTEND?

IT professionals interested in learning about the next generation of Microsoft platforms and tools.

WHERE ARE THE EVENTS?

Events are held in 16 cities across Central Region. To register for this event, please select a link below.

Location/Registration	Date	Time
Waukesha, WI	4/28/2009	3:10pm – 5:00pm
Austin, TX	4/28/2009	3:10pm – 5:00pm
Bloomington, MN	4/30/2009	3:10pm – 5:00pm
Cleveland, OH	4/30/2009	3:10pm – 5:00pm
Indianapolis, IN	5/4/2009	3:10pm – 5:00pm
Chicago, IL	5/5/2009	3:10pm – 5:00pm
Columbus, OH	5/12/2009	3:10pm – 5:00pm
Houston, TX	5/12/2009	3:10pm – 5:00pm
Mason, OH	5/14/2009	3:10pm – 5:00pm
Overland Park, KS	5/14/2009	3:10pm – 5:00pm
Dallas, TX	5/19/2009	3:10pm – 5:00pm
Southfield, MI	5/20/2009	3:10pm – 5:00pm
Downers Grove, IL	5/20/2009	3:10pm – 5:00pm
St. Louis, MO	5/21/2009	3:10pm – 5:00pm
Nashville, TN	6/11/2009	3:10pm – 5:00pm
Knoxville, TN	6/12/2009	3:10pm – 5:00pm

MSDN Unleashed – IE8 & Windows 7 for Developers

2009-04-07T16:37:00.001-04:00

Session 1: Internet Explorer 8 for Developers

The Windows Internet Explorer 8 browser makes it easier to explore and interact with the web. Did you know that there will be a new standards mode by default? While it can easily be turned off, knowing the potential to impact this may have on many sites that have been crafted around various features in past versions is a good idea. Attend this session to learn which current practices you need to change and how the new standards mode affects your development techniques and your existing sites. We review tools that are built into Internet Explorer 8 to help developers debug and create Web pages. We also discuss Web Slices, Accelerators, and Search Suggestion – all of which are key new features in this latest release.

In this session we’ll show you:

· Developer Tools

· Selectors API

· Use and create accelerators

· Use and create web slices

· Use and create search suggestions

· AJAX Navigation enhancements with Virtual Earth demo on history, AJAX Cross Domain Calls

· CSS improvements (printing, counters, new pseudo classes)

Session 2: Developing on Microsoft Windows 7

Building applications that are easy to use, visually appealing, and offer high performance is a challenge that developers face every day. Innovative applications can greatly improve the user experience, empowering companies to differentiate their services and solutions. However, developers are increasingly asked to do more in less time, while also optimizing the power and performance requirements of their applications. The Windows 7 platform makes it easy for developers to create engaging, user-friendly applications by providing familiar tools and rich development features that allow them to take advantage of the latest PC capabilities. In this session we will explore the new Taskbar and Jump Lists, the Scenic Ribbon, file management with Libraries, and Windows Web Services among many other enhancements to the new operating system.

In this session we’ll show you:

· New Features in Windows 7

· Use and create jump lists

· Scenic Ribbon API

· Use and create Libraries

· Windows Web Services API

· Additional enhancements that support development

WHO SHOULD ATTEND?

Developers interested in learning about the next generation of Microsoft platforms and tools.

WHERE ARE THE EVENTS?

Events are held in 16 cities across Central Region. To register for this event, please visit http://www.msdnevents.com/unleashed.

Location/Registration	Date	Time
Waukesha, WI	4/28/2009	1:00pm – 2:50pm
Austin, TX	4/28/2009	1:00pm – 2:50pm
Bloomington, MN	4/30/2009	1:00pm – 2:50pm
Cleveland, OH	4/30/2009	1:00pm – 2:50pm
Indianapolis, IN	5/4/2009	1:00pm – 2:50pm
Chicago, IL	5/5/2009	1:00pm – 2:50pm
Columbus, OH	5/12/2009	1:00pm – 2:50pm
Houston, TX	5/12/2009	1:00pm – 2:50pm
Mason, OH	5/14/2009	1:00pm – 2:50pm
Overland Park, KS	5/14/2009	1:00pm – 2:50pm
Dallas, TX	5/19/2009	1:00pm – 2:50pm
Southfield, MI	5/20/2009	1:00pm – 2:50pm
Downers Grove, IL	5/20/2009	1:00pm – 2:50pm
St. Louis, MO	5/21/2009	1:00pm – 2:50pm
Nashville, TN	6/11/2009	1:00pm – 2:50pm
Knoxville, TN	6/12/2009	1:00pm – 2:50pm

ArcReady – Architecting for the Client Tier

2009-04-07T16:36:00.001-04:00

Architecting for the Client Tier

The client (or presentation) tier of our applications is taking on an increasingly important role. Users are expecting more compelling user interfaces, but they also want more functionality from their applications. In this ArcReady we examine how to design and deliver well architected client applications that will be easy to maintain and extend.

Session 1: Trends and Patterns on the Client Tier

In our first session we will take a vendor and platform neutral look at some of the trends and emerging technologies that can be used on the client tier. We will look at techniques like Mashups, technologies like Natural User Interfaces (NUI) and the increasing importance of the mobile platform. We will also look at some common patterns that can be used in the architecture of the client tier.

Session 2: Applying Microsoft Technology on the Client Tier

In our second session we will take some look at how we can use Microsoft technologies to create well architected and compelling client applications. We will look at technologies like Silverlight and WPF that can be used to create compelling clients. We will also look at technologies that can be used to make your applications more extensible for future development. We will also examine some architectural guidance developed by the Microsoft Patterns and Practices group.

WHAT IS ARCREADY?

· A forum for aspiring and practicing architects to discuss industry trends

· An overview of Microsoft’s roadmap as it relates to software architecture

· A mechanism to solicit your feedback

· An opportunity to showcase the work you do!

WHO SHOULD ATTEND?

Architects and Senior Developers who are interested in becoming an architect.

WHERE ARE THE EVENTS?

Events are held in 16 cities across Central Region. To register for this event, please visit www.arcready.com.

Location/Registration	Date	Time
Waukesha, WI	4/28/2009	9:00am – 11:45am
Austin, TX	4/28/2009	9:00am – 11:45am
Bloomington, MN	4/30/2009	9:00am – 11:45am
Cleveland, OH	4/30/2009	9:00am – 11:45am
Indianapolis, IN	5/4/2009	9:00am – 11:45am
Chicago, IL	5/5/2009	9:00am – 11:45am
Columbus, OH	5/12/2009	9:00am – 11:45am
Houston, TX	5/12/2009	9:00am – 11:45am
Mason, OH	5/14/2009	9:00am – 11:45am
Overland Park, KS	5/14/2009	9:00am – 11:45am
Dallas, TX	5/19/2009	9:00am – 11:45am
Southfield, MI	5/20/2009	9:00am – 11:45am
Downers Grove, IL	5/20/2009	9:00am – 11:45am
St. Louis, MO	5/21/2009	9:00am – 11:45am
Nashville, TN	6/11/2009	9:00am – 11:45am
Knoxville, TN	6/12/2009	9:00am – 11:45am

KalamXoo Conference is on April 25th, 2009

2009-04-04T16:28:00.000-04:00

While I am here at the great West Michigan .NET University event, I wanted to tell you about another Michigan event coming up. This one has a bit of a different flavor though. Instead of being all about hard skills, all of the talks will be about soft skills. I think this is a great change. While we have a very strong community in the area, our user groups spend too much of their time talking about hard skills, and not enough time about skills that make them better developers as a whole. The Kalamaxoo event team set out to change this. I will be speaking, as well as some other great people, so check it out.

From their site http://blindbackup.com/,

The Kalamazoo X Conference is a one-day software development conference hosted in beautiful Southwest Michigan. While there are many great technical conferences in the region, their focus tends toward new technologies and programming languages. The Kalamazoo X Conference intends to uniquely complement those conferences by enabling attendees to boost their process, design, and communication skills in the following areas:

Human interaction, including social, personal, and career development.

Interface and graphic design

Development processes and best practices

Requirements analysis, architecture, design, and modeling

This one day, one of a kind conference is being held April 25, 2009 from 8AM to 6PM in beautiful downtown Kalamazoo.

Register Now! Professionals $20, Students $10.

devLink has opened registration

2009-04-03T16:16:00.000-04:00

I could sit here and tell you about the great conference that devLink is, or how inexpensive (and cost effective it is), or say how awesome it was last year, or about the great speakers (and myself) that will be there. But I figured just pasting in their own well written announcement is enough. It’s call code reuse. I get to be a speaker again this year. While I doubt there will be a devLink bus this year (people still haven’t recovered from last year’s bus) but it would be cheap to get some buddies, and carpool down there. See you there!

     The devLink Technical Conference is pleased to announce it's fourth annual event - devLink 2009. This year devLink will take place August 13 - 15 in Nashville, TN. We have worked hard to bring you the best content possible at a price you can afford. This year promises to be the best devLink ever with nearly 100 sessions offered over three days. That's right, we have expanded devLink to a third day to allow even more content to be delivered to you. The tentative list of sessions is available now so click here for more information.

    We understand that economic hardships abound, so again devLink is brought to you at a price so reasonable that a ticket to devLink is less than two good technical books. Now don't you think you will get more out of three days worth of content delivered by experienced professionals than a couple of books? General admission tickets to devLink 2009 are $100, but if you buy your ticket before April 15 they are only $75. So what are you waiting for? Get your ticket NOW!

     Since 2006, the devLink conference has sold out tickets before the deadline. While we cannot control demand, we can control how many seats are available. This year we return to the excellent facilities offered by Lipscomb University and with that expand our seating capacity to 800 people. Space is limited and having a ticket to devLink 2009 is the only way you can assure admittance so get your ticket TODAY!

Three tips to help your career on Edge

2009-04-02T16:06:00.001-04:00

While I was on campus in Redmond during the MVP summit in March, Adam Carter asked me to swing by the TechNet Edge studio for a quick visit. We sat down, and talked about three things you can do to help you career. Check it out. There are some funny April Fool’s joke videos as well.

P&P Releases PRISM 2.0

2009-02-28T13:41:00.000-05:00

The Patterns & Practices group at Microsoft has released version 2.0 of the PRISM framework. PRISM is a framework you can use you easily build loosely coupled composed applications. This new version supports both WPF and Silverlight! That is totally awesome.

I believe that we should focus on only writing the code that only we can write, and to leverage frameworks and components to provide the infrastructure and cross cutting concerns for our systems. This is a key way to provide more value to your business, and to reduce costs and time. There are plenty of other ways, like TDD, agile, pairing, etc. But this post is about PRISM, and there are far more smarter people than I to learn about those other practices from.

PRISM helps you create modules in your application. For example, a screen might have a list of upcoming appointments, and a section highlighting some tasks the user has to accomplish before the selected appointment. Each of these pieces would be a component. But they aren’t directly tied together. The first instinct might be to refresh the view of the task list when the selected appointment is changed in the list. You might go off and write some glue code to do this. There are many applications that are created like this, and in some situations, this is ok.

But some applications need a greater degree of loose coupling. PRISM provides a sort of message bus within the application that allows the modules to communicate without being directly bound to each other. This is really useful when these components are accessing different systems, and presenting their information in a composed manner.

Another great reason to build a system in such a loosely coupled manner is when the modules are being developed in a disconnected way. Perhaps each component is coming from different teams, and they need a separate development process. Maybe the architect expects a great degree of enhancement by the business over several years, and they want an easy way to plug in new modules as the system grows. This could easily be used by an ISV in such a manner, when they often need to deploy customer specific customizations.

This componentization also benefits the testability of your codebase. When a system is well architected, and has the proper level of the component isolation, it becomes easier to test each component in a stand alone manner.

The great thing about PRISM is it will give you the most reuse of you code across both platforms.

If you are building line of business applications, especially in a services environment, you should take 20 minutes and check out PRISM. The kit comes with a full reference application called Stock Trader. It is built using the framework, and following the latest guidance on how to build composed applications.

Of course guidance is exactly that. As with all things architecture, it depends. You need to spend an hour reading about this, understand how it might fit into what you might be doing, and be prepared to bring out of your toolbox when an opportunity exists. The videos on Channel 9 make it really easy to understand how it can help you.

Channel 9 videos

http://channel9.msdn.com/shows/Continuum/Prismv2/

http://channel9.msdn.com/posts/akMSFT/

Because it is from P&P, and hosted on CodePlex, you get access to the source code. So if it is close to what you need, but you want to enhance it, or tweak it to suit your needs, by all means go ahead. To get the bits, and to read more about the framework, check out these sites:

http://www.microsoft.com/compositewpf

http://www.codeplex.com/prism

Azure ‘How do I’ videos

2009-02-27T10:59:00.000-05:00

Looking for something to do this weekend? How about a series of small, low calorie, bite sized videos on how to work with Azure? Check these out. These are great training videos.

Everyone is interested in Azure, and cloud computing, and everyone is looking for resources to get up to speed quickly. This is the next best thing to downloading the SDK and hacking out some code.

Overall Page	Visit here for the full summary of videos
Get Started Developing on Windows Azure?	If you’re a developer and you’re new to Windows Azure, start here! You’ll see what you need to download and install, and how to create a simple “Hello World” Windows Azure application.
Deploy a Windows Azure Application	You’ll see what it takes to move your application into the cloud – you’ll see how to request and register a token, how to upload your Windows Azure application and how to move it between staging and production in the cloud.
Store Blobs in Windows Azure Storage?	Learn how to leverage Windows Azure storage to store data as blobs. You’ll learn about blob storage, containers and the API that makes it easy to manage everything from managed code.
Leverage Queues in Windows Azure?	Learn how to use queues to facilitate communication between Web and Worker roles in Windows Azure.
Debugging Tips for Windows Azure Applications	The Windows Azure SDK includes a development fabric that provides a "cloud on your desktop." In this screencast, learn how to debug your Windows Azure applications in this environment.
Get Started with .NET Services?	.NET Services are a set of highly scalable building blocks for programming in the cloud. In this brief screencast, you'll learn about the registration process, the SDK and the built-in samples - everything you need to know in order to get started.
Harness the Microsoft .NET Service Bus?	The .NET Service Bus makes it easy to access your Web services no matter where they are. In this brief screencast, you'll see how to take a basic Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) service and expose it to the Internet with the .NET Service Bus.
Get Started with the Live Framework?	If you are looking to get started developing with the Live Framework, this is the place to start! In this screencast you'll learn how to get a Live Services token and what you need to download in order to start writing Live Framework applications.
Use the Microsoft Live Framework Resource Browser?	The Live Framework Resource Model is a simple, straightforward information model based on entities, collections and relationships. In this brief screencast you'll learn how to navigate the relationships between entities by using the Live Framework Resource Browser, which is a tool that ships with the Live Framework SDK.

Dave Giard publishes an interview with Brian H. Prince

2009-02-26T16:55:00.001-05:00

Dave was hanging around the awesome CodeMash event this January, when he asked to interview me for his blogged. So we snuck out to the entryway of the Kalahari, and chatted about my experience at being a new employee of Microsoft.

He had good timing in publishing the video, since this past Wednesday was my one year anniversary as a blue badge. Go check it out.

http://www.davidgiard.com/2009/02/23/BrianPrinceOnWorkingForMicrosoft.aspx

New User Group: Columbus Exchange & Windows User Group

2009-02-26T13:49:00.000-05:00

Some of my colleagues have worked with IT Pros in the community to start a new user group focused on Exchange and Windows. If you need to manage these systems, and want to learn how to really leverage them, this is the group for you.

CEWUG Registration Link

What: http://cewug.spaces.live.com/blog/

· Please join us for the first meeting of the Columbus Exchange & Windows User Group (CEWUG). The goal of CEWUG is to help businesses, public sector and home users to optimize their knowledge of Windows, Exchange, Office Collaboration Server, System Center, Dynamics and Virtualization.

· The goal of the CEWUG is to build relationships with peers, share expertise and involvement with the central Ohio IT community.

· We will meet the 4^th Wednesday of the month at the MS Columbus Office: 8800 Lyra Dr, Suite 400, Columbus, OH 43240

Agenda:

§ 5:30 to 6:05: Welcome time; meet the MS steering committee, pizza and beverages

§ 6:05 to 7:05: Windows 7 Overview

§ 5 minute break

§ 7:10 to 8:15: Finish Windows 7, Start Windows Server 2008 R2

Where:

· 8800 Lyra Dr, Suite 400 Columbus, OH 43240

When:

· Wednesday: February 25, 2009 5:30 to 8:15 PM

I will be with a bunch of KNOTheads

2009-02-25T14:40:00.000-05:00

During the upcoming ArcReady tour, I will be sitting in on a KNOThead meeting. The meeting is at EdFinancial, and is from 5:30-8:00pm on 3/10/2008. We will talk about cloud computing, and how this shift is affecting our organizations, especially during this time of grapefruit.

So come out for ArcReady, and hang around for the KNOThead meeting.

Location:

EdFinancial Services, 150 N Seven Oaks Dr, Knoxville, TN

Job security is a myth, and how IT Pros are Thriving

2009-02-24T18:35:00.001-05:00

No matter how you slice it, the economy is definitely in a state of concern. Some call it a recession, some a depression, others it is a crash. Since all of those words are overloaded, I will choose to use the word Grapefruit to represent the current situation. How concerned you are with grapefruit depends on who you are, and your personal situation. It is these times of grapefruit when there is the most opportunity. Crazy, I know. But now is the time to start that crazy idea, to outmaneuver an opponent, or get desperate enough to take risks you normally wouldn’t take (personally, or as a company) during up times.

All boats float in the high tide. Only great captains can navigate the low tide.

There is no such thing as job security. Surprise. There just isn’t, it is a complete myth. ‘Job Security’ might have made sense two generations ago, but it just doesn’t work now. You make your own security, during good times, and during grapefruits. Through keeping your skills sharp, through delivering real value to your company, planning for your own future, and through professional networking. The people that aren’t worried now are those that have been training at home, going to user groups, and networking both inside and outside the organization. They knew they needed to be ready when the grapefruit came.

A large part of our economy is based on technology, and if you are reading this blog, then you are likely in technology as well. Microsoft is in a position, and I think obligated, to help out IT Pros weather this storm.

We have launched a new program, called Thrive, that will help IT Pros with their careers. We have looked at how we can empower the IT Pro to really move the needle when it comes to helping your company not only survive through these times, but thrive.

The program is centered on three aspects:

Career Care
Technical Competency
Business and IT Alignment

Career Care We have worked out a program to help you guide your career. These come from career and IT experts. We want to help you learn and prove your skills with certifications and access to technical training and material. We are working with CareerBuilder.com to provide help in managing your career.

Technical Competency We are working to bring a series of programs to bear that will help you learn the skills you need to be fresh, and to use the technology you ALREADY HAVE. What? Yes, we want to help you get the most of what you have. No need to buy something that will fix this problem. Chances are you already have it, and have been to busy or distracted with luxurious trips to Hawaii to use it.

Our platforms have had the features for years that help you do more with less. Whether that is virtualization technology, or management tools that help only a few IT Pros to manage hundreds or thousands of desktops. There are plenty of other time and money saving goodness in Windows. It has taken this tough environment to get people to look into using them, when they really need the payback, and show how much value they are really delivering. Plus, chances are you used these features as a selling point to management to let you buy it, so you should probably use them.

Business and IT Alignment We want to help you align with the business, and help you communicate your value, long term, to the business. There are tools and training in place that can teach you how to align your IT goals with the business goals, and then market that throughout your organization. As techs, we really know technology, but sometimes we need help explaining that value to the rest of the world. “It’s just better” usually doesn’t cut it. That is like telling a child to drink grapefruit juice because it is good for them. You have to be able to articulate the value, and then follow through.

Once you are aligned, it is easy to show your value, and it is easy to be seen as a lever to help move the business, not just a cost center, that must be paid like the water bill. If you are a cost center, then the first thing companies look for is how to CUT COSTS. If you are a strategic advantage, they company looks on how to use you as a lever to survive and thrive in this grapefruit.

How are you positioning yourself, your team, and your organization for success during this economic grapefruit? Visit the Thrive site and learn how to enhance your skills, advance your career and elevate IT as the business leader. Go ahead - find out how YOU can Thrive!

Azure Tables are for Squares in the Cloud

2009-02-20T17:05:00.001-05:00

The third aspect of Azure storage is the table structure. BLOBs answer how to manage unstructured data in your cloud application, and tables answer how to manage your structured date.

Tables, like the rest of Azure, are designed to be super scalable. You can easily store billions of rows, and terabytes of data, and still get great performance. Because the tables are part of Azure, the table data is always available, and triple replicated for reliability.

Accessing tables is easy using ADO.NET Data Services, which should be familiar to most .NET developers. ADO.NET DS uses normal .NET classes and LINQ to access your data. If you don’t want to access sit with ADO.NET, you can easily use REST, so any platform can make queries and calls into the data.

Each account can have many tables of data. Each table contains entities, which are like rows in a traditional database. Each entity is indentified with a composite key. The first half is the partition key, which identities which partition the entity lives in. Partitions are how the table data structures scale so well. Which entities go into which partitions are left up to the application and the developer to decide, simply by assigning the key appropriately. You could have a partition in your customers table for each state, based on which state the customer lives in. Azure will move partitions around to balance performance and traffic to a specific data server. If two partitions are very active, one will be moved to a different server.

The second half of the primary key is the RowKey which is used to identify the entity within the partition, and is very similar to your trusty old unique row id.

Both PartitionKey and RowKey are strings, and must be less than 64KB in size.

Queries that reference a partition key in the constraints will be much faster, because the engine can constrain the table scan to the same partition.

Each entity can have up to 255 properties, including the partition key, and the row key. Azure does not enforce a schema. Schema enforcement is left to the application. This gives you the flexibility to vary the shape of the entity based on the scenario, instead of building more and more tables. This is very handy when you are deploying customizations for customers in a multi-tenant scenario.

It is easy to create and destroy tables. It is common to check for the table existence, and create it if it isn’t found on application startup. This makes it easy to deploy your application. No more struggling with complex setup SQL scripts. This code can also be moved into a separate tool for use in deploying your application. Each account has a table called Tables, that tracks which tables have been created.

To access a table with REST, you can easily use the URI:

POST .table.core.windows.net/http://<ACCOUNT NAME>.table.core.windows.net/<TABLE NAME>

Using a POST verb will save an object to the table. The object would be stored in the Atom envelope in the REST call. Querying, updating, and deleting records is just as simple. A sample query would look like:

GET .table.core.windows.net/?$filter">http://<ACCOUNT>.table.core.windows.net/<TABLE>?$filter= cost eq 45

TechNet Tour Unleashed details here!

2009-02-16T09:51:00.001-05:00

[TechNetUnleashed has two siblings, ArcReady, and MSDN Unleashed. For some reason we haven’t unleashed ArcReady yet.]

Windows Server 2008
In this session we will look at Windows Server 2008 and the improvements that have been made to Microsoft’s premier server operating system. Microsoft Windows Server 2008 is the most advanced Windows Server operating system yet, designed to power the next generation of networks, applications, and Web services. With Windows Server 2008 you can develop, deliver, and manage rich user experiences and applications, provide a highly secure network infrastructure, and increase technological efficiency and value within your organization.
Windows Server 2008 introduces several new capabilities including 64bit virtualization, a robust web and development platform, improvements in networking, security, high availability and disaster recovery. In addition, there is a new “Core” installation option that reduces the operating system overhead by removing the graphical user interface thus freeing resources and lowering the potential security attack surface. Come see demonstrations on many of the features in a technical deep dive you won’t want to miss!
After we discuss Windows Server 2008, we’ll briefly discuss the improvements coming in Windows Server 2008 R2 which is in development and now available for beta testing.

Prizes

Attendees are eligible to win a book or a copy of Windows Vista.

Event Schedule – TechNet Events Unleashed starts at 3:00 PM and end by 5:00 PM

St. Louis, MO – March 5, 2009 3:00 PM

Downers Grove, IL – March 9, 2009 3:00 PM

Austin, TX – March 10, 2009 3:00 PM

Indianapolis, IN – March 12, 2009 3:00 PM

Irving, TX – March 19, 2009 3:00 PM

Chicago, IL – March 23, 2009 3:00 PM

Houston, TX – March 24, 2009 3:00 PM

Detroit, MI – March 31, 2009 3:00 PM

MSDN Unleashed tour details announced.

2009-02-16T09:48:00.001-05:00

[MSDN Unleashed has two siblings, ArcReady, and TechNet Unleashed. For some reason we haven’t unleashed ArcReady yet.]

Enhance your coding capabilities with new tools, tips, and inside secrets from MSDN Events. You’ll see how developing for a Windows Mobile phone leverages your current coding skills and can make it simple to build, deploy and debug cool new devices. Additionally, we’ll be showing you how to take full advantage of the Visual Studio debugger. We’ll offer some great tips and tricks to help you debug faster and more efficiently, while applying fresh techniques to ramp up your problem solving abilities.

Session 1: Tips & Tricks for the Visual Studio 2008 Debugger

The Visual Studio debugger is a highly underutilized tool for many developers. In this session, you’ll learn how to use it like a pro, while picking up new techniques to fast-forward your problem solving and debugging abilities. We’ll show you how to use advanced breakpoints, advanced watch window / Expression evaluator tricks, modifiers, assertions on the fly, remote debugging, and more. Whether you’re writing C#, VB, WPF, ASP.NET, Windows Forms, or services, we’ll provide tips and tricks that will have you debugging faster and much more efficiently. The debugger is your primary tool for finding bugs, so join us and learn how to make the most of it.

Session 2: Developing for Windows Mobile Devices

Mobile development is growing fast, and Windows Mobile is at the forefront with over 18 million phones shipped last year and many more cutting-edge devices on the way. Visual Studio developers have tremendous opportunities in this space. Why? Developing for a Windows Mobile phone leverages your existing coding experience and takes it to new heights. In this session, we’ll look at some of the coolest new devices, you’ll learn how to set up Visual Studio with the latest SDK and device emulators, and you’ll see how to build, deploy and debug Windows Mobile applications. We’ll also explore how Internet Explorer Mobile 6 provides new AJAX capabilities that offer the richness of the desktop with pan and zoom features tuned for mobile devices.

Prizes

Attendees are eligible to win one of two books, a copy of Windows Vista or Visual Studio 2008 Professional.

Event Schedule

Cleveland, OH – February 24, 2009 1:00 PM – 5:00 PM

St. Louis, MO – March 5, 2009 1:00 PM – 3:00 PM

Downers Grove, IL – March 9, 2009 1:00 PM – 3:00 PM

Austin, TX – March 10, 2009 1:00 PM – 3:00 PM

Overland Park, KS – March 10, 2009 1:00 PM – 4:00 PM

Indianapolis, IN – March 12, 2009 1:00 PM – 3:00 PM

Irving, TX – March 19, 2009 1:00 PM – 3:00 PM

Columbus, OH – March 20, 2009 1:00 PM – 4:00 PM

Chicago, IL – March 23, 2009 1:00 PM – 3:00 PM

Houston, TX – March 24, 2009 1:00 PM – 3:00 PM

Mason, OH – March 27, 2009 1:00 PM – 4:00 PM

Detroit, MI – March 31, 2009 1:00 PM – 3:00 PM

Waukesha, WI – March 31, 2009 1:00 PM – 4:00 PM

ArcReady Tour is ready to launch!

2009-02-16T09:45:00.001-05:00

[ArcReady has two siblings, MSDN Unleashed, and TechNet Unleashed. For some reason we haven’t unleashed ArcReady yet.]

For our next ArcReady, we will explore a topic on everyone’s mind: Cloud computing. Several industry companies have announced cloud computing services. In October 2008 at the Professional Developers Conference, Microsoft announced the next phase of our Software + Services vision: the Azure Services Platform. The Azure Services Platform provides a wide range of internet services that can be consumed from both on premises environments or the internet.

Session 1: Cloud Services In our first session we will explore the current state of cloud services. We will then look at how applications should be architected for the cloud and explore a reference application deployed on Windows Azure. We will also look at the services that can be built for on premises application, using .NET Services. We will also address some of the concerns that enterprises have about cloud services, such as regulatory and compliance issues.

Session 2: Mesh and Live Services In our second session we will take a slightly different look at cloud based services by exploring Live Mesh and Live Services. Live Mesh is a data synchronization client that has a rich API to build applications on. Live services are a collection of APIs that can be used to create rich applications for your customers. Live Services are based on internet standard protocols and data formats.

Event Schedule – ArcReady starts at 9:00 AM local time and ends by noon.

St. Louis, MO – March 5, 2009 9:00 AM

Downers Grove, IL – March 9, 2009 9:00 AM

Austin, TX – March 10, 2009 9:00 AM

Knoxville, TN – March 10, 2009 9:00 AM

Overland Park, KS – March 10, 2009 9:00 AM

Indianapolis, IN – March 12, 2009 9:00 AM

Nashville, TN – March 13, 2009 9:00 AM

Irving, TX – March 19, 2009 9:00 AM

Columbus, OH – March 20, 2009 9:00 AM

Chicago, IL – March 23, 2009 9:00 AM

Houston, TX – March 24, 2009 9:00 AM

Bloomington, MN – March 25, 2009 9:00 AM

Cleveland, OH – March 26, 2009 9:00 AM

Mason, OH – March 27, 2009 9:00 AM

Detroit, MI – March 31, 2009 9:00 AM

Waukesha, WI – March 31, 2009 9:00 AM

Take and find notes with MS Recite on your phone

2009-02-16T09:35:00.001-05:00

I have always wanted to be able to just speak into my phone to store simple reminders.

There is the voice note application built in, but it just doesn’t work smoothly for me. And you end up with all of these .wav files all over the place.

There is 'jott', where you call a number to save your reminder. They turn it into text, and send it to your inbox. I tried it a few years ago, but I never really fell in love it.

While these two mechanisms work ok, they both make retrieval difficult once you have built up a fair amount of recordings.

Microsoft Research has released a CTP of some technology they have been developing. Recite is a Windows Mobile application. You simply click “Remember” to record all of your reminders. Click “Search” to ask your notes a question. Recite figures out what you are asking, and finds the related recorded note. Watch the video below, and get all of the latest information at http://recite.microsoft.com. Just thinking about how they have to search a series of voice recordings, with a voice recording is mind bending.

<a href="http://video.msn.com/?mkt=en-US&playlist=videoByUuids:uuids:1cf330f0-7863-401a-ba91-c3013ed1e03c&showPlaylist=true&from=msnvideo" target="_new" title="Microsoft Recite">Video: Microsoft Recite</a>

Disk Defragmentation in Windows 7

2009-02-13T09:54:00.001-05:00

I have always been interested in the internals of operating systems, and the science behind the engineering. One of those aspects is reading and writing to storage, and how that can be done in an efficient and performant manner.

The Engineering Windows 7 blog has posted how they work with hard disks, and how disk defragmentation has changed over the versions of Windows. It is a very interesting read. I wouldn’t dig into the comments, like usual, they are filled with trolls and flame wars. Oh well. If you haven’t been reading this blog, and you have any interest in OSs or in Windows 7, I highly recommend it. It is an open and honest discussion on the building of Windows 7 by the people actually building it. The posts are detailed, and explain some of the decisions that the Windows team has to make, and how they make them. Balancing all of the different interests and different use models and different users is quite challenging.

Here is my short summary, but you really should just go read the real thing.

Because the hard disk is so much slower than the CPU, how the OS interacts with the disk is very important. Some of the key principles for this are very similar to the guidance on how to use services. From their post:

Perform less I/O, i.e. try and minimize the number of times a disk read or write request is issued.
When I/O is issued, transfer data in relatively large chunks, i.e. read or write in bulk.

This is very much like with services. You try to make non-chatty services, that are chunky in nature, and call them when needed. Your application’s performance will suffer if you make to many small calls to a service. All of the serialization, deserialization (I love that word, and I just added it to my spell checker), dispatching, and transport costs you latency. This is a bigger problem with SOAP than with REST because of the overhead of a SOAP message, but the concern is still there.

Back to disks, and how slow they are. The team has figured out, long ago, that you want to read big chunks at a time, so even if the user has requested one small part of a file, they should read a lot more of it, so that it is ready and in cache. For example, when streaming a music file to the player, the player asks for the first 64K (or however big the buffer is). The OS will request more than that, assuming the user will want the rest.

This has become an even bigger issue as files have grown in size over the years. Ten years ago, people didn’t have terabyte drives on their desktops, and file sizes were in the KB’s, maybe MB’s.

In order for the disk to more easily read a file, it helps if the file is allocated in a sequence on the disk itself. If the file is fragmented into chunks all over the disk, the disk will take longer seeking out those pieces and returning them. The practice of making sure the files are assembled together in sequence, and perhaps putting them on the most efficient locations on the disk is known as disk defragmentation. As a concept, it is relatively simple. Move all of the open space to the end of the disk (think of it as a virtual sequential tape). Then rearrange the pieces of the files so that they are all together. It is common for related files (perhaps for OS startup) to be put back to back to make reading them even faster.

The Windows team has found out that a single large file doesn’t have to be in one long sequence. As long as the fragmented chunks are large (bigger than 64MB) then they aren’t rearranged, because moving them really wouldn’t help. It is the constant zigzagging for small pieces that costs big during I/O.

I remember defragging my hard drives all the time. Especially before I installed a new application (and by application I mean game). By consolidating all of the open space, when I installed said game (I get pangs for Civilization just thinking of this), then all of the files would be contiguous, and grouped together for performance.

In Windows 7, the algorithm has been tuned. There were files in Vista that could not be moved by defrag. These were usually NTFS meta data files. If you can’t move these, you can’t shrink your disk volume, which if you are using VM’s or want to rearrange your disk partition is a big issue. Windows 7 is now able to move them.

Also, many new laptops, especially netbooks, come with SSD drives. Defragmenting them may not matter, and even if it would help, it would cut into the lifecycle of the drive. Windows 7 will not automatically schedule a defrag on an SSD drive.

An interesting note is that auto defrag is not enabled on Windows Server 2008 R2. This is because how file fragmentation affects the system is dependent on the unique workload on that system, and an experience system administrator should configure the defrag process to meet those needs. You wouldn’t want a big defrag going on just as the nightly backup starts, for example.

A big change is in the UI. The team has made it possible to schedule the defrag process to your liking, and you can schedule multiple disks in parallel (in Vista they had to be in sequence).

From the post:

Stop reading my blog, and go read their blog already!

Build a Silverlight game, win $5,000

2009-02-12T13:36:00.001-05:00

This is how you can score an easy $5,000. Think up, design, and build an awesome game in Silverlight. Just submit it to the Server Quest II contest site. Then get all of your friends and family to vote for it. The game with the most votes wins some awesome cash.

The deadline is 78 days from now, so go get cracking.

The website has a cool trailer, done in the 16bit graphics style of yore. Really funny stuff. But your game can be on anything, it doesn’t have to sync up with the Server Quest plot.

<br/><a href="http://video.msn.com/video.aspx?vid=182f88a2-d194-4938-a6c2-86d2a41f490f" target="_new" title="Server Quest Trailer">Video: Server Quest Trailer</a>

How about a package delivery and retrieval simulator, that is multiplayer, and allows you to collect equipment, cash, and friends? Call it FedCraft.

Or a real time strategy game that is centered around giant configurable robots doign battle with a background story about different clans competing for a diminishing pool of critical resources. Call it WreckWarrior.

Perhaps a puzzle game that tracks progress in a community leader board way mixed with a bureaucracy simulator, where you get to cut red tape with a giant pair of laser scissors. RedTris?

They did this contest last year, and it had some really great games come out of it.

Of course you should check out the site for all of the real details and contest rules.

Using BLOBs in Azure to store homemade BSG episodes

2009-02-10T09:30:00.001-05:00

The other day I discussed using Queues in Azure, and why you would want to. Today, we will talk about using BLOBs.

First a bit about BLOBs. BLOB stands for Binary Large OBject, and is a way to store binary data. Up until now, whenever I used BLOBs it was as a column type in SQL Server and Oracle Server. This was always challenging for me because the APIs to store and read BLOBs were a pain, and hard to use. At least for me. The other problem was related to maintenance on the database server. Your database will get very big, very quickly by storing images and videos in the database. There may be some very good reasons for you to do this, but for me, in the past, the tax was too high. The approach I generally took was to store the image in a folder somewhere, and store the path and filename in the database. This did create a maintenance issue, in that we have to backup the file folder, and make sure it was transactionally in sync with the database backup. That is a whole different blog post.

BUT, if you are looking at using BLOBs in a database, check out the new FILESTREAM feature in SQL Server 2008. I wish I had that about five years ago.

This common pain is what causes most people to wince when they hear BLOB, at least I know I do. But BLOBs are important. They are a great way to store all of that unstructured data we have. Our world is becoming rich media centric in what we do, and what we store.

BLOBs don’t have to be pictures or videos. They can be any binary stream. Perhaps a large catalog detail file, or a backup history. It can really be anything. BLOBs are opaque though, so you usually can’t scan them during a query or to help in an index. In that case, make sure you store some metadata with them.

BLOBs are one of the three pillars of the Azure storage fabric. There are queues, tables, and BLOBs. Any data saved in the storage fabric is stored in three different replicas. This is done for reliability, and scalability reasons. This storage is also shared across your account. So you can have one node store files into the BLOB storage, and another node could read it. This is very similar to using file storage in an on-premises application.

Within your account, you can organize your Blobs with containers. These are just a simple mechanism to segment your Blob storage, and make it easier to work with them. At this point, it isn’t possible to nest containers, like you would file folders on your file system.

Once I have created a container, and Blob, accessing it is as easy as browsing to this URL:

http://BHP.blob.core.windows.net/Fingerprints/Prinsoner198

Blobs and containers are locked down to only be accessible by the account owner. If you want a container of Blobs to be publicly accessible on your site, you can use access control lists on the container. In this way, you can grant anonymous users read access.

In your application code, you will want to reference the Microsoft.Samples.ServiceHosting library. This dll will hold some nice classes that will make working with Azure Storage easier. You can find it in the Azures Samples folder that comes with the SDK.

To store a Blob in a known container, you would use the above URL, but with a PUT verb instead of a GET verb. When you ‘put’ a Blob, the size is limited to 64MB. If your file is bigger than that, you can use the Put Block method. This will allow you to store the Blob in 4MB blocks until you are done. The maximum size of any Blob is currently 50GB. That is pretty big. Want to know why it’s 50GB, and not 51GB or something like that? Because they needed a number, and no one will ever need more than 50GB for a single Blob. :) If it was me, I would have made it just large enough to hold a complete BlueRay movie. You know, for when you want to store your home made BlueRay movies in the cloud.

One of the scenarios you might use Blobs for are to store images and videos (or other user generated content) on your site. In that case, storing them, and displaying them back to your users is pretty simple.

Another common scenario, which ties into the post on queues, is the transitional scenario. In this case, a user might upload a video for processing. Your application would store the video into Blob storage, and then push a work ticket into the queue. The work ticket would hold only the top meta data (user name, transaction id in your db, the name of the Blob). The worker node would pull this off of the queue, pick up the Blob, and process it. It might then put the results into a different Blob container, and then finally delete the original Blob out of storage. Guess what the delete command is. You guessed it, you just change the HTTP verb to DELETE. Same URL as above. Of course, the user has to have permissions to delete, so don’t worry that some script kid is going to start deleting all of your homemade Battle Star Galactica movies off of your site.

Toledo will be cloudy on February 17th

2009-02-06T16:22:00.001-05:00

The Northwest .NET Users Group has been kind enough to invite me to speak at their February meeting. It will be on 2/17 at 6:00p – 8:00p, located at 333 North Summit Street, Toledo, Oh.

I will be speaking on cloud computing, what it can mean to you, and what the Azure Services Platform is. Given enough time, we will even look at some code.

I hope to see you there!

Queues in Azure

2009-02-02T13:46:00.001-05:00

Many modern systems are now being designed with SOA principles in mind. This usually means they are designed as a composite application of several services working together. As part of this structure, you usually need a way for the different services to communicate.

A common way is to use an Enterprise Service Bus, or even just naked, direct SOAP calls. This works when the systems are synchronous in nature. But if the service you are leveraging is very asynchronous, meaning it is more like a back end processor, or bulk processor, then you are likely going to end up working with queues. The advantage to queues is that they help enforce some loose coupling to your architecture. Just make sure that you pick a queue-ing technology that supports the protocols the consumers will need (ie SOAP, REST, COM+, etc.)

If you are working with Azure, then you can easily leverage the queue infrastructure already build into the storage fabric of Azure. Before you dive in, there are a few things you should know about how queues work, and some of the design limitations they have.

Queues are FIFO. That means the first message in is the first message out. Much like a line for tickets at the movie theatre for Star Trek. The first nerd in line, gets the first ticket, etc.

Because it is possible for the processing agent that took the top message to fail, it is possible for a message to get forgotten about in an architecture like this. In this case, most queue servers have an ability to mark a message as read, but not actually delete it until the processor says it is successful. In this manner, if the processing fails, your code can find stale read messages, and reprocess them after a period of timeout. The ‘read’ state also keeps other processing nodes from picking up the same message, and processing it a second time. It is very common in this scenario to have several processing nodes reading messages off of the same queue. The queue becomes an abstraction to talking with the group of nodes, and is an easy way to balance the load across the nodes.

Queues are a one-way asynchronous messaging system. I can use a queue to send you a message, but there has to be some other mechanism for any return message. Sometimes this is just a second queue, but more likely there is some other out of band signaling going on. Perhaps the sudden appearance of data in your database, a flag being set, or a flat file gets picked up the next morning. Another common return path is for the back end processor to call a lightweight service (REST of SOAP) that merely reports that the specific message has been processed. For example, the contract might include an order id, and a final status (completed, shipped, error, pineapple, etc.).

You don’t just dump a giant message on the queue, this will surely lead to bad performance, regardless of which queue server you are using (Azure, MSMQ, MQ Series, etc.) If you are just processing an order from a web site, then it might be ok. But if you are processing an image, or something of real size, you are better to follow a pattern called a ‘control message’ or ‘work request message’. In this pattern, you drop off the actual large part of the message in some common store. This could be a common file system, common database, or the BLOB storage in Azure. Then you put a message in the queue that tells the backend processor what needs done, and which item in the common store to use.

In the always common image thumbnail generator scenario, you might put the uploaded image into BLOG storage, and then put a message in the queue that states the name of the item in BLOB storage, the expected thumbnail dimensions, and an account code to bill the work to. The backend processor would then pick up the message, go fetch the image, do the work, bill the proper code, and then dump the thumbnail back into the common storage. The consuming website must just keep looking for the particular thumbnail filename to see when it is done, or you could leverage one of the callback mechanisms mentioned above.

It is common to have one queue per message pattern, meaning all messages going into the queue should either always be bound for the same destination (all messages pertaining to customer records), or be of the same verb (process this image, produce report). The downside to this is that it is very easy to end up with a proliferation of queues. This leads to a management nightmare, as well as a lot of traffic.

In Azure, you can create as many named queues as you want. When you put a message onto a queue, it can be no larger than 8KB, and must be XML. This is to keep the platform fast, and super scalable. A queue can theoretically hold as many messages are you want to put in it, but I haven’t done any performance or scalability testing on the Azure queue to see if this holds up.

The API is RESTful, and you can place or read items from the queue from anywhere that make that REST call, it doesn’t have to be code running in an Azure role. This means that you can host your backend processor in the cloud, to get eth dynamic scalability to respond to spike events, but wire up your preexisting applications to feed that queue.

What is the address of your queue? It depends on what you name it, and your account name for Azure. Perhaps you named your queue ImageProcessing, and your account name is BHP. In that case, the address for the queue would be : http://BHP.queue.core.windows.net/ImageProcessing. As you make REST calls into this address, make sure you remember you are addressing the queue at large. Meaning a delete command would delete the queue. To add a message to the queue, you need to extend the URI a little, to something like this: http://BHP.queue.core.windows.net/ImageProcessing/messages. Of course there would be parameters that hold that actual message content you wanted to add.

When you get a message from the queue (a HTTP GET against the URL above) you have to optional parameters you can define. The first lets you fetch more than one message at a time. This is important for scale reasons, when the overhead of fetching a message is high. In this case, grabbing a batch of messages is more efficient. The second parameter allows you to set the invisible timeout, up to two hours. If you don’t delete the message before this timeout, then it will reset back to visible, allowing someone else to pick up the message.

When you GET a message, you are given a pop receipt id. This id is needed in order to DELETE the message when you are completed with it’s processing. You will also need to supply the message id itself (which is a GUID). This is to make sure you delete the proper message off of the queue, and that you are the most recent recipient of the message. Remember, in a timeout scenario, the message could be revived, and given to another processor. If the timeout, which can be set on the PUT, expires, then the pop receipt will expire as well. This keeps you from running into conflicts when things go haywire.

If people want, I can code up a sample, and walk through it.

Is that an architecture in your pocket?

2009-01-30T06:19:00.000-05:00

A lot of developers and architects ask me how they can start learning about architecture. The are usually looking for the “Golden Path” to the one, true architecture for their application.

Of course this doesn’t exist. Each system must have it’s own architecture, to support it’s own needs. But, as architects, we do need a mechanism to share what we know, the experience that we build up over our careers. We should be able to say “This is what I built, and this is why it worked in this scenario.” We also need to consider the frames of concern for a model, and discuss those as well.

We need to make sure that this knowledge is approachable. There are other industries where they build these giant repositories, and then are ignored. I like to call these ‘ShelfWare’. Others call them ‘Bodies of Knowledge.” More like Dead Bodies of Knowledge. :) No one really uses it, but references it as a bible to defend a bad move or decision.

How can we make it approachable? Well, first you can’t require membership in a secret club. You also need to make sure you explain domain specific terms, and you also have to keep it short. Not 2 pages short, but not 50,000 pages long either. And it has to have good navigation.

Another problem is that architecture is as diverse as development. You have different concerns in a web application than you do in a client app, or in a services tier.

The Patterns & Practices Group at Microsoft has been pumping out a lot of guidance recently. I am just now catching up with all of their deliverables over the past few months.

Their most recent release is a set of targeted Architecture Pocket Guides. They are of a fairly short read, plenty of pictures, and covers these aspects well, with the common knowledge most experienced architects have.

These are definitely a must read for any new or aspiring architect. I think lead developers should be very familiar with them as well. An experienced architect should briefly read them. It is a good way to confirm what you have learned, and formalize it a bit. And it is always good to read in print what you already ‘know’ or feel. It helps you put concrete words to your instincts.

Of course, even though it is in the pocket guide, it is just that, guidance. Use your own critical thought, and answer with ‘it depends.’

You can browse the index of Pocket Guides at the Pocket Guide Index page at our Application Architecture KB on CodePlex.

Software + Services in Plain English

2009-01-29T07:11:00.000-05:00

I spend a lot of time explaining to customers and audiences what we mean when we say “Software plus Services”. In short, we believe that you need a mix of on site software, and services from the cloud. The exact mix of what is onsite vs. in the cloud is up to you, and what software piece is in which position is also up to you.

We are putting a lot of effort behind the concept, because we want the platforms and architecture to be flexible enough for you to find the right balance for you, but to also give you the ability to change that balance. I should be able to start something in the cloud, move it on premises as I need, and then maybe later back into the cloud.

The video is part of a meme on YouTube on explaining concepts ‘in plain English.’ It’s only about 4 minutes long, so take a look. And it uses paper dolls. How cool is that?

New Guide “Acceptance Test Engineering” or “How to decide if your software is ready”

2009-01-28T06:31:00.000-05:00

The Patterns & Practices team has been pumping out a lot of great content lately. So much, that I haven’t been able to keep up with it all. What I like about their new model, is that they publish their works in draft or beta form to CodePlex.com, so that they can gather community feedback.

The latest guide from them is titled “Acceptance Test Engineering”, and can be downloaded from here. Please read it, and provide some feedback, any feedback back to the team. P&P is a great example of how some groups in Microsoft are embracing the community, and leveraging their input to make their products better.

I think this guide will be of interest to lead developers, consulting managers, project managers, test leads, and architects.

This guide focuses on the skills around Acceptance Test, and how to implement them. The first section focuses on thoughts behind AT’s, and why we need help defining ‘done’ on our projects.

The second section reads like a patterns book. It is chock full of effective practices. Best part? They explain scenarios as to when each practice would and would not be a good idea. For example, they cover a process known as ‘Test Last’. I have heard this called TED by TDD developers. TED stands for Test Eventually Development. They cover the practice, and are clear about its pros (are there any?), and major cons. They cover when you are likely to see this, such as when a supplier is not able or willing to provide incremental builds throughout the process. The big limitation they outline is

Significant shortcomings may be found too late to do anything about them in the current product release.

On page 13 they talk about how they tried to define acceptance testing by developing a model, and then executing test against that model, to see if it was a good model to be used in the book. The great thing is, the first models failed their tests. I guess doing that is like writing a VB compiler in VB.

When I was in consulting, our project teams spent some of their time on ‘Story Tests.’ The idea was to do some testing at a story level. We felt that testing at purely a code or functional level left us blind to whether the software was achieving it’s desired goals. We tested across the system, relating to the story of a user. This is covered in the guide on page 170, but they call it “Soap Opera Testing.” I LOVE that title! I wish I had thought to use it all those years ago.

The third section contains a series of examples. I find this to be lacking in a lot of guides that try to teach you a new practice. I think real samples, and scenarios are important in learning when to use, and when NOT to use a practice or skill.

The sample story around Soap Opera testing is truly a soap opera. It involves a CEO, credit card fraud and identity theft, and ex-wife and a girlfriend.

You should check the guide out, provide feedback, and consider folding the patterns that are covered into your process.

BizTalk Server 2009 Beta

2009-01-27T13:15:00.000-05:00

Many of you know I have spent a good portion of my past five years working on a lot of BizTalk related projects. What does BizTalk do? Everything of course! :)

If you are doing SOA, or an ESB, integration, edi, or RFID, this is the tool for you.

I missed this news last month because I was so heads down on CodeMash. We just released the beta of BizTalk Server 2009. We also release the RFID Mobile and RFID Standards pack.

The first thing any BizTalk’er would want in the new version is support for the latest platform versions. Even in BizTalk 2006 R2 you had to use VS2005. With BizTalk 2009 you can use Windows Server 2008, Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 SP1, Microsoft SQL Server 2008 and the .NET Framework 3.5 SP1.

The new version also has extended support for Oracle e-business suite, IBM CICS, IMS, DB2, and WebSphere MQ. There is new support for UDDI v3.0, which is important in service registry scenarios.

You can grab the beta over here. An update to the ESB Toolkit is available there as well.

SharePoint Pod Show - A Podcast All About SharePoint

2009-01-26T17:06:00.001-05:00

SharePoint has become a huge product. Almost everywhere I go, someone is asking me about SharePoint. They either want to know how to develop on it or how to deploy it, or they want to find someone who knows how.

If you are looking for resources to learn more about SharePoint, I recommend a podcast by Rob, Nick and Brett. Their podcast is called “SharePoint Pod Show”. There are some good books out there, but hearing experience MOSS developers talk about it on a regular pod show really immerses you into the technology.

Their current show is about SharePoint skills, and how they fit into your career and the current ‘economy’. Their show is based on a recent poll. It’s very interesting. If you are into SharePoint, or have to work with it, I suggest you give them a spin.

Soft Skillz: Annual Career Introspection

2009-01-25T16:17:00.001-05:00

I often give a talk called “Soft Skillz: They aren’t just for humans anymore”. It focuses on many of the lessons I have learned over my career. Such topics as how to speak to humans, how to read body language, and how to manage your own career.

If you aren’t happy with where you are in your career, then you only have yourself to blame. Your career is something you need to actively manage. When you are taking a new job, it should only be because it fits into your plan for your career, never for money. To avoid any money related problems in the search for a new job, you should already know if you want a positions BEFORE they offer it to you. At that point, if you KNOW it supports your career plan, and is a company you can feel at home for a while, then you know it is a job you should possibly take. Of course, the actual job offer and it’s details must work out logically for it all to make sense (which is a whole other blog post).

There is a very simple process that you can use to make sure your career stays on track. It only has a few steps.

Perform an annual career introspective review.
Set you career goals. Outward then inward.
Setup a plan to accomplish #2.
Sign up for another year.
Go back to step #1.

I follow this process on an annual timeline. I usually do step one during that week that no work gets done (between the holidays and New Years).

Step 1. Perform an annual career introspective review.

Take a whole day out of your life to sit down, and quietly think of your career for the past year. This will of course encompass your job, but it isn’t limited to just that. You want to think about your role at your job, what you have done to learn, the people you have met, and how the changing world of technology has impacted you, your job, and your career. Things that always stick out in my head are things like:

Did I have opportunities to learn? Did I take advantage of them?
Who and what had an impact on me?
Who and what did I have an impact on?
Are my 5/3/1 year goals any different?
Does my J-O-B still support my career plan and goals?

I can’t answer these questions for you. Only you can. At this point, don’t worry about the economy, or factors like ‘stability’ in your company. This isn’t what that is about. Think of your current job as a vector, and your career path as a second vector. If they are in alignment, all is good. If they aren’t, then you and your employer won’t be happy.

I usually do all of this while playing my XBox 360. Your mileage may vary.

Step 2. Set you career goals. Outward then inward.

Decide what your career goals are. It’s ok, they probably don’t just jump into your mind. Especially if you haven’t been through this process before.

The farther out a goal’s timeline is, the more ambiguous it can be. For example, when I first started at QSI, my two five year goals were:

Build a successful team, and reach a specific revenue target.
Have an impact on the success and growth of my customers.

The first is a bit specific, and the second is fairly broad. I then broke those into one and three year goals. These shorter term goals should, in part, support you in reaching your longer term goal. My one year goals, at that time were:

Win 3 projects, with a total revenue of 250k.
Staff the team with two core members.
Get involved in the community.

Step 3. Setup a plan to accomplish #2.

Come up with a plan to achieve your goals. The first step is to write them down, and put them somewhere where you can see them everyday. THIS IS IMPORTANT. This way, the day to day fire drills you have will not distract you too much from your goals. You need to be reminded of them, to stay on track. I recommend writing them on a 3”x5” story card, and tape it to your monitor (just below the sticky note with your password on it.)

In this ongoing example, my plan involved building a relationship with the sales team (to define our offering, teach the offering to the sales team), go on sales calls to hear how customers respond to the offering, meet existing employees as they rolled off other assignments (to see if they would fit my initial team needs), and get out in the community (go to meetings, volunteer to help in any way needed), and entertain promising team members or potential customers.

There were other steps in this plan, but you get the picture. It’s ok for this plan to change through the year, but your goals should stay constant, unless there is some major upheaval in what is going on. Don’t change your plan willy-nilly. It is very easy to lose your momentum in what you are doing, and you want the feeling of getting something done. This isn’t software, so your plan doesn’t have to be super agile.

Make sure to take time, and share your new goals and plans with a mentor or two. Don’t ask for their permission, but ask for their input and guidance. You might want to adjust your plans, based on their feedback.

Step 4. Sign up for another year.

Some people worry about their jobs constantly. They are always doing this math in their head, as to whether they should stay, are they happy, etc. This can come and go, based on how things that day or week might be going. But you need to keep the long view in mind when thinking about this. And I find all of this internal debate a huge distraction, and a lot of extra stress.

Something a mentor taught me about five years ago is to ‘sign up for one more year.’

Think about your job, in context with your career, and your plan (see above!). Decide if it still works for what you are trying to achieve, and if it does ‘Sign up for another year.’ In this process, you are committing to this job for another year. During that year, you will no longer do this math, debate about staying, or actively look for new opportunities. This will remove a huge distraction, and reduce your stress by an amazing amount.

If the job doesn’t line up with where you want to go, then commit to going back to work, and continuing to work hard, but with a mind open to opportunities. It is amazing the opportunities that just drop in your lap when you are mentally open to and prepared for them. In this way, you will still put forth the effort into you job that you should be doing, but positioning yourself for a change. Keep in mind that you might want to start planning for your departure, just in case. Start training your replacement, and make sure all of your responsibilities are covered. This will make your departure smoother.

While you are doing this math, don’t include the ‘grass is greener’ factor, or ‘wart’ factors. ALL jobs have warts. There isn’t one without them. Just make sure they are warts that you can live with.

Step 5. Go back to step #1.

Every year, make sure you take this time, and follow the steps.

QSI’s James Bender talks on Cloud Computing with Windows Azure

2009-01-13T13:57:00.001-05:00

Where: QSI Training Center, 440 Polaris Parkway, Suite 500
When: Wednesday, January 21, 2009 @ 5:30 – 7:00 p.m.
RSVP: Natalie Marsch @ nmarsch@quicksolutions.com

*Food & beverages will be served at 5:30 p.m.
Title: Cloud Computing with Windows Azure
Speaker: James Bender

Description: Cloud computing is poised to be the next big breakthrough in Enterprise computing. Companies like Amazon, Google, IBM, Oracle and Microsoft are making large investments in this new paradigm and positioning themselves to be leaders in this new space. But why is cloud computing so important? This session will answer that question and help you as a developer and/or architect get a handle on cloud computing. You will also see how easy cloud computing can be with Microsoft Azure in a variety of Enterprise scenarios.

Bio: James is an Architect with Quick Solutions and has been involved in software development and architecture for 13 years. He has worked as a developer and architect on everything from small, single-user applications to Enterprise-scale, multi-user systems. His specialties are .NET development and architecture, SOA, WCF, WF, cloud computing, and agile development methodologies. He is an experienced mentor and author.

James is an active member of the development community. He started and continues to lead (organize??) the Columbus Architects Group (www.colarc.org) and is the senior editor of first-party content for nplus1.org, an educational website aimed toward architects and aspiring architects.

When he’s not sitting in front of his laptop playing with the code, he can be found playing Xbox, or with one of his many guitars pretending to be a rock star.

James maintains a blog at www.jamescbender.com and his Twitter ID is JamesBender

How to run .NET apps on the iPhone

2009-01-13T09:13:00.001-05:00

Yes, that's right, on the iPhone. Not only there, but on the Wii and the Android phone as well.

Side note: I got to look at an Android phone at CodeMash. It was ok. It felt heavy for it’s size. The UI was confusing for me, but the GMail interface was very strong.

Anyway, I was browsing ArsTechnica this morning and came across this article, “Open source Mono framework brings C# to iPhone and Wii”. What really piqued my interest was because I just got back from CodeMash, where we had an iPhone development workshop.

In it Ryan Paul discusses how developers have been getting around Apple’s restrictive policies on not allowing interpreted and runtime based platforms on the iPhone. If that isn’t directly aimed at .NET, Java, and other really popular languages right now, I don’t know what is.

It seems that people are using Mono (from Novell, the brain child of Miguel de Icaza) to generate binaries. Mono provides the ability to skip CIL in the compilation process, and go straight to binaries. This bypasses the need for the runtime environment on the phone. There are other tricks they use to make this all work (pre-linking in all the other assemblies is an example).

There is also a full fledged 3-D game development platform called Unity, which was developed on Mono. You can use it to build games for the iPhone or the Wii.

This just goes to show that this is indeed the second Renaissance, as people are using these tools in ways their creators could not have imagined. These tools are following the same thought we have had with our tools. We want you to be able to migrate your skills and knowledge into other scenarios. Know .NET? Then you can use 90% of those skills on Web, RIA, Windows desktop, services, integration, XNA, the cloud, mobile, and now iPhone and Wii. To squeeze more ROI out of the investment you have in your tools and skills, you should look for more avenues to leverage them. And heck, I bet these people are smirking just a little bit by finding a way around the restrictions in the iPhone SDK.

“Let a thousand poppies bloom.”

One thing that Apple is forgetting in their policies, in their zeal to control the whole platform, is that true adoption and love comes from letting people do what they want with what they own. Think of kids with cassette tapes, and CD’s. Or the people with PSP’s, or Honda Civics. Those are examples of both industries that have restricted what you can do with what you own and paid for it in the long term, and some that are open to people doing what they want.

Sony at first restricted what people could do on and with their PSPs. Fortunately, they backed off, and even started supplying extra tools and access for home brewers. Now the PSP is a very strong mobile device segment.

nPlus1.org is hosting another ArcSummit on 2/25/09

2009-01-12T12:12:00.001-05:00

nPlus1.org, a great web site that is helping architects become better architects is putting on another ArcSummit. This one will be in Columbus, Ohio on 2/25/2009. Microsoft is sponsoring, so it will be at the Microsoft office. The event goes from noon to 5pm, and we will be providing lunch.

The event will be partly presentation, and part fishbowl discussion, and will follow the same agenda as the ArcSummit in Cincinnati. Read the recap here.

We will start by talking about Software + Services, and what it can mean to your business. The second half will be a lap around Windows Azure, and how it works.

The nPlus1 team wants to keep the number of people at the event small so that the conversations can be richer, so sign up fast, they are capping it at 40 people.

To Register: http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032400944&Culture=en-US

Location:

Microsoft Office - Columbus
8800 Lyra Drive - 4th Floor
Suite 400 Columbus Ohio 43240

MAP

You wanted more Wally?

2008-12-29T13:18:00.001-05:00

Wally McClure is a great leader in our .NET community. He is a very active podcaster and author. He tours our area regularly, speaking on SQL Performance, ASP.NET, and is now diving head first into Azure.

Some things he has been up to lately?

- Published an ebook on ASP.NET 3.5 SP1: http://www.wrox.com/WileyCDA/WroxTitle/New-Features-in-ASP-NET-3-5-Service-Pack-1.productCd-0470457341.html

- Several podcasts on Azure:

http://aspnetpodcast.com/CS11/blogs/asp.net_podcast/archive/2008/12/22/asp-net-podcast-show-132-windows-azure-blob-storage-video.aspx

http://aspnetpodcast.com/CS11/blogs/asp.net_podcast/archive/2008/12/25/asp-net-podcast-show-133-windows-azure-table-storage-video.aspx

- A lap around ASP.NET 3.5 SP1:

http://aspnetpodcast.com/CS11/blogs/asp.net_podcast/archive/2008/12/05/asp-net-podcast-show-130-david-and-wally-talk-about-net-3-5-service-pack-1.aspx

- Caching in a 3.5 SP1 world:

http://aspnetpodcast.com/CS11/blogs/asp.net_podcast/archive/2008/12/04/asp-net-podcast-show-129-caching-with-net-3-5-sp1.aspx

So, go get your wally on!

SlideShare Sends PowerPoint to the Cloud

2008-12-18T10:13:00.001-05:00

I like SlideShare. I surf it for ideas, and I always find something interesting. I don’t normally post about other articles or blogs too often, but I really found this as an interesting example of using the cloud to expand your existing offering in a horizontal way to provide more value to your users, as well as make your service a little more sticky.

And without further ado…

http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/12/15/slideshare-sends-powerpoint-to-the-cloud-with-new-plugin/

SlideShare, a startup that we’ve likened to a YouTube equivalent for PowerPoint presentations, has released a new plugin for Microsoft Office 2007 that allows users to edit and publish presentations directly to their SlideShare accounts. You can download the free plugin here.

Beyond publishing new PowerPoint documents to the web, the SlideShare plugin can import SlideShare files from the cloud (both your own and those that are shared by others), which can then be modified on your native PowerPoint client. The plugin features an integrated search so you can browse through files from your SlideShare contacts and groups, as well as support for Twitter and FriendFeed so you can broadcast a new presentation without leaving Office.

nPlus1.org hosts ArcSummit on Cloud Computing

2008-12-15T09:45:00.001-05:00

nPlus1.org and Microsoft have teamed up to give a series of free ArcSummit events! The first of these events will be in less than two weeks on December 16th. I know it’s close to the holidays, but as things are winding down before vacations wouldn’t it be cool to spend some time with like-minded folks talking about how S+S and cloud computing can help your business and clients.

Tuesday, December 16, 2008
12:00 PM (Noon) - 5:00 PM Eastern Time
Microsoft Office - Cincinnati
MPR Room
4605 Duke Drive
Suite 800 Mason Ohio 45040
The event will consist of presentations and open discussions on two topics:

How Software + Services may provide business value .
Cloud Computing in General and an Introduction to Windows Azure .

Lunch will be provided starting at noon.

Register!

If you haven’t checked out the nPlus1.org website, you need to do it right now. They are also looking for new authors and editors, if you want to get involved in the community.

Getting a The request failed with HTTP status 401: Unauthorized Failure

2008-11-30T18:05:00.001-05:00

Recently I created a small tool to manage discount codes for CodeMash. It was a website based on ASP.NET Dynamic Data (which is part of .NET 3.5 sp1). This tool made it real easy to put together a quick and simple web form to manage these codes.

When I went to deploy it to the CodeMash server, I found I didn’t have SP1 installed, so I installed it. Deployed the web form, and everything seemed awesome.

Then at around 6:00am the next morning I started getting lots of emails about problems with the CodeMash site. Which was funny, because the core site (not including registration) has always been fairly stable. It is an ASP.NET site. We store the site content in WSS, and bring that content into the web site via the WSS web services. Both sites live on the same server (remember that, it becomes important later on).

That morning, those web services started failing with a “The request failed with HTTP status 401: Unauthorized”.

I searched and wondered. I uninstalled SP1, and reinstalled .NET 3.0 RTM. Nothing fixed it. I pushed a build of the site that bypassed the services as a short term fix, but the problem persisted for over a week. It was KILLING me. What made it harder was the the services worked just fine when being called from a remote location, like my developer workstation. But calling the service from the same web server that the WSS services were running kept failing.

I searched, and searched, and searched. I couldn’t find anything that even remotely helped. The Jim Holmes (fellow CodeMash founder, and all around smart guy) sent me a link to a blog post that might help. It turns out it was a link to my own blog. The post shows how to configure WSS for just NTLM instead of Kerberos. This configuration is now exposed in the WSS admin tool, so you don’t have to do it at the command prompt anymore. But that setting was already correct.

I was at a complete roadblock. I even uninstalled, installed .NET 3.5 sp1 and reinstalled WSS. Then I simplified my search terms, and a MSKB article popped up. I then followed the steps in the article, and that fixed it. Yahoo!

The article covers a change that .NET 3.5 SP1 puts in place. This security change is already present in other scenarios, so they added it to SP1 to make it more consistent. This feature protects against loopback reflection attacks, and blocks any loopback call. A loopback call is when you call ‘out’ to a service that is actually local. The KB article goes over a few options. You can disable loopback check, or you can reconfigure how you connect to the local service (using a local address, instead of a public address.)

The problem had nothing to do with WSS, and that was the red herring for me. It had to do with some fixes that the .NET 3.5 SP1 put in place.

ColArc Meeting

2008-11-30T17:27:00.001-05:00

My friend James just announced the next meeting for ColArc is this Monday evening. It’s at 6pm, and is at the QSI office. You should check it out.

I plan on being there, and we will be giving out a free ticket to the MSDN Developer Conference, which is in Detroit on January 22nd, 2009.

Are you ready for a REST?

2008-10-29T16:08:00.001-04:00

Many architects and developers are integrating services into their strategies and projects. There are two main delivery mechanisms with services (from a mainstream, standards perspective). You can use SOAP, or you can use REST.

There have been wars for a long time around which is better, easier to use, and has less impact on the global environment. This post isn’t about that. My answer as to which one you should use is ‘It Depends.’

SOAP has all of the enterprisey-goo that we typically need at the core of our systems. Transactions, Strong Typing, Routing, Security, Extensibility, etc. These are all planned out with WS-* standards for platform interoperability. REST, on the other hand, is simple, lightweight, easy to use, and very straightforward.

I think most organizations will end up with a measure of both in their environments. I think SOAP will be more prevalent at the core of your enterprise, with REST at the edges that touch other enterprises and the public at large.

When we shipped WCF 3.0 (a long time ago it seems), we shipped complete support for all of stable and adopted WS-* protocols, so that enterprises could start building really great services in their infrastructure.

Then REST hit. REST is one of those overnight successes that take ten years to happen. Everyone has had a REST based application on their desktop for at least ten years, if not longer. It’s called your web browser.

Did we have to develop a new platform and framework for REST on .NET? No. WCF isn’t a WS-* stack, it’s a communications framework, that was built to handle changes in how we format and send messages. So adding REST to WCF wasn’t all that hard. There was some basic support in WCF 3.5.

But there is always room for more support, and customers are always looking to us for best practices, and other guidance. In order to support this need, we have launched the REST Developer Center, and the WCF REST Starter Kit on CodePlex.

The starter kit has been released as a preview. We have put it on CodePlex so our customers can use the bits, and give us feedback on how to improve it before it ships.

From the site:

The WCF REST Starter Kit Codeplex Preview 1 release provides new features that enable or simplify various aspects of using the http capabilities in WCF, such as caching, security, error handling, help page support, conditional PUT, push style streaming, type based dispatch and semi-structured XML support. The WCF REST Starter Kit also provides Visual Studio templates for creating REST style services such as an Atom feed service, a REST-RPC hybrid service, Resource singleton and collection services and an Atom Publishing Protocol service. In addition, there are samples, documentation and other guidance that help to use these new capabilities.

A friend of mine, Jesus Rodriguez, who is about as all knowing about services as you can get (and who has a bad habit of trying to sabotage me at conferences the night before I speak) is going to start a series on the WCF REST Starter Kit. So go read his first post on how to add caching to REST.

Whitepaper on Windows Azure has been posted

2008-10-27T17:32:00.001-04:00

You have likely heard about Windows Azure by now. We made a very big announcement at the PDC today about it. Windows Azure is our Cloud OS. It will allow you to run .NET code in the sky, in a dynamic, scalable, and manageable way. We have also announced Live Services, .NET Services, and SQL Services. These services sort of stack on each other. Think of Azure as your Server OS. SQL provides data related services, etc.

Azure will support web facing, interactive, stateless applications. These applications run in an instance called a ‘Web Role.’ You can also host code that just performs asynchronous work, called a ‘Worker Role.’ The Worker Role might host a WCF service fed by a queue for example.

You will be able to develop and test locally using the Azure Fabric locally, and then only deploy to the cloud when you are ready.

David Chappell wrote a great whitepaper on our new services platform, and explains some expected customer scenarios. It walks through our services platform very nicely. Check it out the whitepaper on Azure Services Platform.

Check out the following links for more information:

Welcome to Renaissance 2.0

2008-10-27T12:41:00.001-04:00

The Renaissance was a period of rebirth in Europe during the 14th to 17th centuries. It was hundreds of years of revolution in the arts and in culture. The social patterns, thinking and technology that allowed this to happen took thousands of years to develop. It sparked a new passion in learning, new techniques and styles of painting, and widespread reform. This lead to an amazing leap in science and technology and the definition of the scientific method, heralding the ‘Modern Age’. This ultimately led to a change in human society so grand, that we still talk about it today.

Many of the world’s best achievements and treasures come form this period of time.

I think the past few years, and the technologies coming out today, represent the leading edge of Renaissance 2.0. And since we are all geeks, we will of course shorten it to Ren2.0.

Today, with cloud services, Azure, software plus services patterns, modern testing, SOAP/REST, Geneva, platforms like Mesh, and everything else, leads us to the point where we can build applications we have NEVER dreamed of before, just like what happened in Ren1.0. Think of the applications and services you use today, that could not have existing at all a few months or years ago. Think of all of the new experimentation and advances that will build on these early steps. The core internet really enabled this all. The easy access to information, and to communications has multiplied the amount of innovation and free thinking needed for such an explosion.

Thousand of years from now, there will be college students studying Twitter, and the times we are in today.

This is the time to take your idea, and just DO IT! The economy may look to be in shambles, but that shouldn’t stop you. Now is the time for you do build that game changing idea, perhaps in your spare time, or perhaps with some angel funding.

Niccolo de Niccoli, Poffio Bracciolini, Leonardo da Vinci, Copernicus, Galileo, Martin Luther; they all had their turn.

Now it’s our turn. Change the world, or stay home.

* I wrote this post almost six months ago, but wanted to hold it off until our announcements at PDC today. I thought people would be more likely to understand what I was saying if they had seen those announcements.

Published on nPlus1.org

2008-10-27T11:16:00.001-04:00

Mike Wood, James Bender, and Chris Woodruff saw a gap in the community. They saw that there was a strong community and a great deal of support for all types of developers. They also noticed that there isn’t a lot out there to help architects and aspiring architects come together, learn, and become better at what they do.

So they got together, scrabbled together some cash (Microsoft is proud to be a sponsor), and launched www.nPlus1.org. The team is organized into two groups. Senior Editors run the organization, and coordinate the original content that is submitted for publishing. Then there is a larger group of Editors. Editors focus on submitting links and summaries of content found elsewhere on the Internet (known as TidBits on the site). They are actively looking for more Editors, so ping them if you are interested. This two pronged approach brings both new content from local authors, and a simple way to find all of the great architecture related content scattered all over the place.

The site is specifically geared for all types of architecture, and related interests. It is a v1.0 of the site, so please submit any feedback on how to make it better to the Senior Editors on the site.

I was asked to write an article to be part of the launch content. I submitted “What Does An Architect Do? It Depends.” Give it a read, browse the site, and subscribe to the RSS feeds.

I know they have a lot of ideas for improving the site over the next few weeks. And if you have an interesting link, and an idea for an article, I recommend you contact them with your idea.

Meet the guy in charge of VSTS Test

2008-10-27T10:12:00.001-04:00

My teammate Jennifer Marsman has planned a tour with Mark Mydland through Michigan, Ohio, Kentucky, and Tennessee. Mark is the Principal Group Manager over Visual Studio Team System Test Edition.

Mark’s team will be making some huge announcements around what the next version of VSTS:Test can do, and you don’t want to miss this. It’s really incredible.

Mark will be presenting at most user groups as he tours, and here is his schedule. Don’t miss it. Jennifer specifically scheduled Mark’s tour after the PDC so he can show you all of the new features. Come ask him your testing questions. We will also be provided dinner at all of the user group meetings, so come on out, and see it all in action.

Grand Rapids, MI - Tues 11/11 at 6pm

Watermark Country Club, 5500 Cascade Rd, Grand Rapids, MI 49548

Ann Arbor, MI - Wed 11/12 at 6pm

SRT Solutions, 206 S. Fifth Avenue, Suite 200, Ann Arbor, MI 48104

Cleveland, OH - Thurs 11/13 at 6:30pm

Sogeti office, Beacon Place Office Building, 6055 Rockside Woods Blvd, Independence, OH 44131

Columbus, OH - Fri 11/14 at 6pm

Microsoft "Polaris Parkway" office, 8800 Lyra Dr, Columbus, OH 43240

Cincinnati, OH - Mon 11/17 at 6pm

MAX Training, 4900 Parkway Dr, Suite 160, Mason, OH 45040-8429

Louisville, KY - Tues 11/18 at 6:30pm

Sullivan University-Louisville Campus Theatre (Room 254), 3101 Bardstown Road, Louisville, KY 40205

Nashville, TN - Wed 11/19 at 6pm

Microsoft Nashville office, MPR room, 2555 Meridian Blvd, Suite 300, Franklin, TN 37067

Memphis, TN - Thurs 11/20 at 6pm

New Horizons, 4775 American Way, Memphis, TN 38118

Knoxville, TN - Fri 11/21 at 6pm

New Horizons, Building C, Suite 100, 9111 Cross Park Drive, Knoxville, TN 37923

(This Knoxville location is subject to change; I'll update this post once it is confirmed.)

SOA & Business Process Conference 2009

2008-10-21T11:11:00.001-04:00

The SOA & Business Process Conference 2009 is put on by Microsoft, and is held on campus in Redmond. I have been to it many times as a partner and customer, and it is one of my favorite events.

The event always gives you great access, directly, to the teams building our strategies and products around SOA and BPM. This is a great chance to learn a great deal, and provide feedback on our roadmap. The conference is also loaded with thought leaders, and leading companies in the SOA/BPM space.

The event has grown so large over the years, that in order to keep it on campus, they had to break it into two parts. The first part is for partners in the SOA/BPM space, and runs January 26-27, 2009, and will cost $599. The second part will be for customers, and runs January 28-30, 2009, and will cost $599 if you register before December 1st, 2008.

There is also a great reception held on the evening of January 27th for all of the incoming customer attendees.

The theme for this year is “Real World SOA Here and Now!" The focus will be on solutions that are out and running today, and the ROI and related benefits from those solutions. There will also be a focus on best practices.

You can register here for the partner half (use the code soabppart), and here for the customer half. Contact me if you would like a more detailed invitation.

Event: Microsoft Dog Food Developer Conference

2008-10-20T18:17:00.002-04:00

I have been working with some friends that are on our Enterprise team to put together an event. We decided to call it the Dog Food Developer Conference. About half of the speakers are local community leaders, and the other half are Microsofties.

DF will be held on November 20th, 2008, and starts at 8:00am.

We will have three tracks throughout the day, covering a wide range of topics. The schedule is listed below. The last part of the afternoon is left for open discussion with the speakers. We have reserved plenty of small rooms, so you can snag a speaker, and sneak off to have a private conversation. You can, of course, have your conversation out in the open if you want.

The event is free, and there are only a few seats left, so register quickly. Lunch will be provided.

Time:

Track 0

Track 1

Track 2

8 to 9:00 AM

Register

9-9:45 Key Note

S oftware + S ervices , MS Roadmaps, PDC Announcements

Speaker: Brian Prince , MS

S oftware + S ervices , MS Roadmaps, PDC Announcements

Speaker: Jeff Blankenburg, MS

S oftware + S ervices , MS Roadmaps, PDC Announcements

Speaker: Jim Holmes, MS MVP

9:55-11:35

Will go to Noon for Q and A

MOSS: ECM

KnowledgeLake, Imaging Capture

Speaker:

Knowledge Lake : Mike Miller , Mark Oman, KnowledgeLake

IE 8: Application Compatibility, Web 2.0, Web Slices, activities and extension.

Speaker: Mike Lutton, Sogeti

BizTalk: SOA and ESB

Speaker:

Monish Nagisetty, Quick Solutions

Noon to 1:00 PM

Lunch

1 to 2:20

MOSS Development

Speaker: Leon Gersing, Telligent

SilverLight/WPF Overview

Speaker: Jeff Blankenburg, MS

Legacy Modernization: Tools for COBOL and Mainframe migrations to .NET

Speaker: Hewitt Wright, MS Walter Sweat, Fujitsu

2:30 to 3:30

Virtual Earth

Speaker: Steve Milroy, MS

MVC Overview

Speaker: Steve Smith, Regional Director for MS MVP Program,

Nimble Software Professionals

Writing Secure Code:

Speaker: Steve Webb , ICC

3:30 to 5:00 PM

Ask the experts and whiteboard one on one sessions:

1. Carey Payette, President of the Central Ohio .NET Developer’s Group

a. C#

2. Alexei Govorine, Co-founder of Central OH Application Lifecycle Management Group

a. Team Foundation Server, ALM

3. Rick Kierner, HMB Consultant

a. MOSS Development

4. Jim Holmes, MS MVP

a. .NET, MOSS Development

5. Monish Nagisetty: Founder of Mid-Ohio Connected Systems Developers User Group

a. SOA, BizTalk

6. Leon Gersing, Telligent

a. MOSS development

7. Jeff Hunsaker, Co-founder of Central OH Application Lifecycle Management Group

a. Team Foundation Server, ALM

8. Mario Fulan, Microsoft Consulting Services

a. MOSS Governance and development

9. Tom Sears, Microsoft Consulting Services

a. .NET Architecture, Architectural Guidance

10. Steve Smith, MS MVP

a. ASP.NET, MVC, Agile Practices

11. David Baliles, MS SLG Dev Tools, Solution Specialist

a. MSDN and TFS

12. Mike Gresley, MS SLG Developer Technology Specialist

a. .NET and TFS

Add Events to Calendar, Subscribe to Events

Wrap up from Ann Arbor Day of .NET

2008-10-20T18:04:00.001-04:00

I am just now recovering from a great tip up to AA. The event went very well, and the organizers did a great job. It is really cool to see leaders from five different user groups get together to put on such a smoothly run event.

The speakers and content they lined up were just great. I ended up in the big amphitheatre room again, as the last session of the day, just like last year. But I am not complaining. I actually like that. It allows me to tie some of the things I have seen during the day together, and weave them into my talk.

I spoke on ‘How to be an architect.’ This was the first instance of this talk, and I think, with that being said, it went pretty well. I definitely found ways to smooth the delivery, and increase the connectedness of some of the value flow. I will work to make these improvements before the next time I deliver it.

I have posted the slides here, if you are interested.

I do want to follow up on some of the questions that were asked.

0. Someone asked, if you wear many hats at work (architect, developer, support guy, etc.), where can you find the time to do the continuous learning. I responded that you should just get a divorce. This actually showed up on Twitter, and I want to make it clear.

I was JUST KIDDING.

Here are some thoughts though:

a. Learning IS part of your job as a dev or an architect. So set aside an hour or two a week to do just that.

b. Keep a stack of trade magazines next to your desk, and read them during the fragments of free time we have scattered throughout the day. For example, while you are waiting for your machine to boot, or for something to download.

c. Don’t forget to ‘Eat like a bird.’

d. Keep magazines and books in the office bathroom.

e. Learn to scan headlines, and speed read. I can read a whole magazine in minutes by doing this. Also keep in mind that most journalists follow a standard pattern to their writing. The article usually has three parts: Summarize what you are going to say (this pulls you in), provide the details, and then close with summarizing what you said. When I am skimming, I just read the headline, and the first ‘part.’ I only read the detail section if the article is very germane or interesting.

1. I was describing what some of the concerns an architect should have. Someone then piped up and asked why I hadn’t mentioned ‘design.’ I immediately responded that Information and UX architecture are important too. In hindsight, the person might have been asking about the technical design that some architects do. It is an old notion that the architect on a project provides all or most of the detailed technical design. This is ok, if that is how your organization works, but I try not to play that role. As an architect, I try to layout the high level concepts of the design. This is the outline that the details will fit in. Then I work with the developers to define the detailed technical design as needed.

This accomplishes several things. First, it fits in really well in in agile process. Second, it moves some of the design to some often underused assets, your developers. They know how to write this code, and they know the frameworks very well. Let them help you define these details. They can bring that experience, while you represent the higher level concerns (business, user, project needs, etc.). This also answers another common concern of developers, in that they want to be more involved in the design, and have impact on what they are building.

I want to thank all of the people that came out. See you next time.

How to put on a PDC viewing party

2008-10-10T11:49:00.001-04:00

The PDC is next week, and it is going to be huge. The amount and scale of the announcements are, in my view, the biggest of any PDC in the past (can’t say for future PDCs).

Two of the keynotes by Ray Ozzie will be streamed live. The other keynotes will be available online shortly after they are completed. Since the PDC is on the west coast, this puts the keynotes during lunchtime in the EST time zone.

The keynotes will contain all of the big announcements, and the great demos. They will give you an idea for the flavor of what the sessions are going to deep dive into.

So here is how to throw a PDC viewing party.

0. Reserve a conference room of some sort. You will need a projector, speakers, and a computer to stream from. The speakers are optional, if everyone in your part can read lips.

1. Invite everyone you know. Invite people you don’t know. Tweet about it. Try not to break any stalking laws though.

2. Either convince your boss to pay for pizza for everyone, or tell the attendees to bring their own lunch. Giant bowls of popcorn sound good right now too. You could just steal food from the office kitchen refrigerator, but you never know how old that food is. Pitch this to the boss as a training event, and a heads up on the new technologies MS is releasing. It is important that you can work our plans for the next few years into your own plans.

3. Settle in, and watch. Keep the wow-ing and ahh-ing down. You don’t want to make your officemates jealous that you are a developer, and they are stuck with some ‘other’ career.

4. Don’t forget to poop like an elephant, and think like an architect. After the shock and awe feeling wears off, and your vision returns, start to talk about the tech, and how you could use it to make your jobs better. How you could use it to increase your value to your customers. Perhaps that new thing will allow you to roll out more features faster, or connect with the customer in a new way. Share what you learn with the gophers who don’t show up to your party.

5. Start a buzzword bingo game, and give out prizes. Words to track would be ‘super’, ‘excited’, ‘cloud’, ‘plus’, and ‘whack-a-doo-whack-a-doo’, ‘mac’, ‘apple’, ‘virtual’, and ‘mobile.’

If you can’t get your own party together, you either need to just huddle in your cube, and pretend you are working on code, or traipse on over to someone else’s viewing party.

When you are done, and want to talk about any of the topics in detail, please let me know. We can schedule a visit.

If you know of a public viewing party, let me know, and I will list it here, or post it as a comment.

Leave the coffee Brian.

2008-10-03T16:11:00.001-04:00

Everyone is excited about PDC2008. Go register if you haven’t yet. See your local user group leader for a $200 off discount code!

The biggest announcement so far is that each attendee will receive a 160 GB USB hard drive, with all the bits on it, include a pre-beta release of Windows 7! We will also be revealing our cloud platform, as well as details on .NET 4 and Visual Studio 2010.

To celebrate, Channel8 just published this video, of the marketing team putting together some promos for PDC. Watch to the end to see the twist.

PDC 2008 is coming... and I can't wait!

Announcing Team System Cafe

2008-09-27T17:54:00.001-04:00

A great team member of mine (Randy Pagels, who works with a lot of customers to help them understand the business value of ALM and TFS) just launched a site at http://www.teamsystemcafe.net/. It brings together a lot of great resources on Team Foundation System, Visual Studio Team Suite, and Application Lifecycle Management.

There is a great blog roll of related sites as well. Take a few minutes and check it out.

ArcReady Slides

2008-09-22T09:57:00.001-04:00

The Tennessee tour for ArcReady went very well (followed up by an awesome week at Disney for vacation). I want to thank everyone who came out. We had a lot of good conversations.

Here are the slides:

Session 1 covers the patterns and concepts for how to architect for different distributed systems using modern architectures.

Session 2 covers Zermatt, and how you can use it to deploy scenarios covered in session 1.

PDC EARLY BIRD SPECIAL EXTENDED!

2008-09-02T11:54:00.001-04:00

Once when I worked for a consulting firm, one of my leads wanted to go to a big conference. So we filled out the paperwork, estimated flight and hotel costs, and submitted it into the black hole of bureaucracy. I hounded my manager at the time, every other day.

After what seemed like an infinite amount of time, we found out the training request was approved. It was too late to use the early bird special price, but registration was still open.

Then we had to fight the admin staff to get the attendee registered. By the time everything was all said and done, the event was sold out, and they couldn’t go.

If you are in that situation, please note that the Early Bird discount for PDC2008 has been extended until September 8th. You will get $200 off (little less than 10%).

This is the one PDC you can’t miss. It will be bigger than ever, covered with a gooey layer of awesomeness.

Go register now, and ask for forgiveness later. :)

I’m on .NET Rocks!

2008-08-28T22:48:00.001-04:00

We were hanging out at the hotel bar on Saturday night (August 23rd), just hanging out. It was my birthday, and we were unwinding from devLink (which rocked!), and I was exhausted from working really long days.

Carl and Richard from .NET Rocks was hanging out there as well. After the conversation got rolling, they whipped out a wireless microphone with onboard memory and started interviewing everyone at the table. There is a great discussion of devLink, OpenSpaces, CodeMash, and lots of other stuff.

It was a lot of fun. Take some time and give a listen to show #372.

Kentucky Day of .NET

2008-08-28T18:13:00.001-04:00

Jeremy Sublett and Chad Campbell are organizing the second Kentucky Day of .NET.

It will be on Saturday, September 6. They have lined up a number of great speakers to cover lots of .NET topics for developers. Please visit http://kydayof.net to see the sessions and to sign up.

Jeff Blankenburg will be keynoting, and I will be presenting my Soft Skillz talk. If you need a ride from Columbus, maybe we can carpool.

Saturday, Sept. 6

Sullivan University

9:00 am to 4:00 pm

CodeMash 2009 Call for Speakers

2008-08-28T16:15:00.001-04:00

I'm pleased and excited to inform you that CodeMash 2009 planning is underway! We'll be returning to the Kalahari Resort to hold our third event this coming January 7-9, 2009, and do hope you'll consider participating.

Submit your proposed session through the CodeMash website by navigating to http://codemash.org/BeASpeaker.aspx. As with prior events, speakers are provided with a free conference pass, including food, admission to all sessions, and all of the fame and glory attached to being a CodeMash participant. The deadline for submission is October 22, 2008, however given the volume of proposals we'd appreciate it if you could strive to beat this deadline by at least a few weeks.

January 7-9, you ask? You read it right, we're expanding the event to include a third day! Dubbed the CodeMash Precompiler, this day long event (held on January 7) will include a number of hands-on labs which give attendees the opportunity to explore a topic at great depth. We're still sorting out the details. The ensuing two days will follow the same fun format as per the previous events.

MSDN Unleashed Event Details

2008-08-27T15:58:00.001-04:00

We are ready to announce our next ArcReady and MSDN Unleashed tour dates. ArcReady was detailed in the prior blog post. For those that are new, these are events given by your local evangelism team, in as many local cities as we can work out.

These events happen every quarter. The ArcReadys are always in the morning, from 9am-11:30am. MSDN is from 1pm-4pm. They will usually be held in the same facility. ArcReady is geared for practicing and aspiring architects. You don’t have to be an architect to get value out of it. MSDN Unleashed events are geared for all types of developers.

MSDN Unleashed

Session 1: Demystifying WPF

Today’s applications need to do more than simply work. They need to draw in the user, and provide a differentiated experience. This means moving beyond battleship gray forms, boxy UIs, and providing a positive user experience. Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) provides powerful capabilities to develop a compelling user interface, the kind that makes an application stand out. In this session, we’ll examine the core concepts of WPF such as layout panels, data binding, styles and control templates, and we’ll use them to develop an application UI from the ground up.

Session 2: Developing Applications with Visual Studio 2008 and .NET Framework 3.5 Service Pack 1

Service Pack 1 and Visual Studio 2008 introduce a wide variety of new features for targeting Windows, Office and the Web. This includes more controls, a streamlined setup, improved startup performance, fresh graphics features, improved AJAX support, and much more. We’re also introducing the ADO.NET Entity Framework and ADO.NET Data Services, which are designed to simplify application data access by providing an extensible, conceptual model for data from any source, while enabling this model to closely reflect business requirements. Don’t miss this lively session and learn how to use these powerful new features in your applications.

WHO SHOULD ATTEND?

Anyone who designs, develops, or debugs code. If you are an architect, developer or just enjoy curly braces, join us.

WHERE ARE THE EVENTS?

Events are held in 12 cities across Central Region. To register for this event, please select a link below.

9/10/08 Nashville TN

Register

9/16/08 Downers Grove IL

Register

9/17/08 Indianapolis IN

Register

9/23/08 Irving TX

Register

9/23/08 Waukesha WI

Register

9/24/08 Houston TX

Register

9/25/08 Austin TX

Register

9/30/08 Southfield MI

Register

10/2/08 Columbus OH

Register

10/7/08 Chicago IL

Register

10/7/08 Mason OH

Register

10/9/08 Cleveland OH

Register

ArcReady Announcement

2008-08-27T15:57:00.001-04:00

We are ready to announce our next ArcReady and MSDN Unleashed tour dates. MSDN Unleashed info in next blog post. For those that are new, these are events given by your local evangelism team, in as many local cities as we can work out.

Microsoft ArcReady

Architecting Modern Distributed Applications

Nearly every application we build today has dependencies to other systems. How do we design them to work together to meet our goals? How do we decide what to build and what to buy? Do we host it ourselves or in the cloud? With a bewildering array of choices, the biggest challenge we face today is how to architect robust applications with the right technologies to meet our user’s needs and integrate nicely into our existing IT ecosystems.

Join our Central Region Architect Evangelists for a great discussion on architecting distributed applications using all the latest technologies and best practices.

Session 1: Blueprints for Success. In this session, we will survey the modern architecture landscape from the ground up, including infrastructure, application, and client solution choices. We’ll discuss how current industry trends are shaping our architectures and present an innovative architecture mapping technique for analyzing our customer’s needs and aligning them to today’s technologies and solution patterns.
Session 2: Making It Real. In this session, we’ll take a look at several case studies to learn how to apply the mapping technique from Session 1 to architect real world solutions that add true business value. We’ll examine applications we use every day and take a walk through a Microsoft reference architecture that explores many of the decisions we face when building modern distributed applications.

WHO SHOULD ATTEND?

Architects and Senior Developers who are interested in becoming an architect.

WHERE ARE THE EVENTS?

Events are held in 16 cities across Central Region. To register for this event, please visit www.arcready.com.

Date	Location
9/10/2008	Nashville, TN
9/11/2008	Knoxville, TN
9/30/2008	Southfield, MI
10/2/2008	Columbus, OH
10/7/2008	Cincinnati, OH
10/9/2008	Cleveland, OH

ARCast.TV episode Live!

2008-08-25T09:44:00.001-04:00

A few months ago I sat down with Jim Holmes and Philip Jordan at Quick Solutions to talk about an elegant way to handle a difficult scenario.

ARCast.TV - Jim Holmes and Philip Jordan on Excel Services

http://channel9.msdn.com/shows/ARCast.TV/ARCastTV-Jim-Homes-and-Philip-Jordan-on-Business-Models-that-leverage-Excel-Services/

They often have customers with complex business logic in Excel, and the customer often thinks they want a new application to replace this. But the users also want to be able to update not only the business data, but the business MODELS. Trying to do this can be difficult, so Jim and Philip turned to MOSS, and Excel Services.

Excel Services allows the user to publish their spreadsheets to their consumers. The consumers use the sheet in the browser. They don’t need Excel on the desktop. The great thing is the Intellectual Property of the business model is safe, because the end consumer only ever gets to see the output of the models, not the math behind the models.

Anyway, please check it out. It’s only 20 minutes long. This is my first Arcast episode, and I really want to do several more.